October 14th, 2016 I was 10 years old when I went to my first offline Smash tournament. I found my little Staten Island local through Facebook groups and SmashBoards. My parents were understandably hesitant about letting me spend Friday nights playing Smash at a TCG store with older strangers. I feel like I was the only one who knew what would happen next. My competitive drive started with wanting to beat my older cousin. He’d skill gap me at Brawl when I was 3 years old and he was 7. I was very upset one particular day after a loss and was practically begging him to just let me get my one. I won’t forget what he told me. “What’s the point of playing together if I’ll just let you win? It’s not fun that way and I wouldn’t want to play with you if that’s the case.” I couldn’t disagree. I wanted to become better than him. Brawl wasn’t my time yet, but Smash 4 changed everything. I started on a shitty DS, waiting for the Wii U version, then discovered the wider competitive scene. Using our shitty AOL computer that I played Roblox on, I started playing Anther’s Ladder with Gamepad Link. WiFi tournaments, crews, friendships, rivalries. Some of those relationships are still going strong today. 2016 was a shitty year for me. I was dealing with personal problems that would be hard for anyone, let alone a kid who wasn’t even a teenager yet. Smash gave me purpose when I needed it most. What I didn’t realize was that the community would become the biggest saving grace of all. It’s not crazy to say I wouldn’t know almost any of the people in my life today if I hadn’t joined this scene. Not my friends, my girlfriend, a found family. I’ve always struggled with thinking about the future. Whenever someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up or what I’d major in, I had no answer. I couldn’t imagine pursuing something that didn’t feel real to me, but the thought of becoming another cog in a machine was just as intimidating. That fear followed me everywhere. Nothing in life is guaranteed, and sometimes the world plays a twisted joke on you. Even now, I think it connects to something deeply internalized in me: imposter syndrome. Through life’s ebbs and flows, I’ve struggled to understand who I am despite having only ever been myself. Sometimes it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime of lifetimes, even though it’s only been two decades. That’s what makes this journey so humbling. I couldn’t write a better storyline for myself. From SWT in 2021, to being so close at Glitch in 2022, to winning my first major at Crown in 2023, just a week before graduating high school and completing a goal I’d set for myself years earlier. Winning Genesis and everything that’s followed since. This was all me. The same kid who was scared walking into his first local learned that being scared isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes that nervous rush is exactly what pushes you past your limits. My first trip to Japan in 2023 brought some serious revelations about my place in the world. It’s crazy to think there was a time I wanted to stop playing. I had to dig deep into who I was because even imagining life without Smash scared me. Now, we are in present day on my way to work, I pass the venue where it all started. It hasn’t been a TCG store for years, but I can’t help but always get this emotional feeling passing something that shaped so much of my life and is now gone. But gone doesn’t mean forever. This community has grown far beyond that little local scene. I’m truly grateful for everyone and everything along the way. “Even if you never win, you can’t pretend, you’ll never be happy again.”