During the week of October 19th through the 22nd, e-Sports took on various teams and had both wins and losses. They played Lightridge High School and lost 1-2 in Pokemon Unite, Shelby County High School and won 6-3 in Street Fighter, Marshall County High School and won 7-4 in Super Smash Brothers, and Shelby County again losing 1-2 in Mario Kart. 

The e-Sports team has been very successful and many of the players are extremely talented. Speaking with some of the players, it is apparent that they have taken time to cultivate their skills. Grayson Clark, a Sophomore at Boyle, describes some of his experience with Pokemon Unite and Street Fighter. “I’ve been playing Unite for about a couple months, and Street Fighter for about two years,” Grayson shares. Two years is a while for knowing, playing, and learning a specific game. He also shares some of the fundamental skills for each game with this, “You have to be a lot better at Street Fighter to succeed in the harder matches. Whereas, Unite you have to rely more on teamwork.” Grayson explains that he and his team “don’t really call out very much,” making winning games more difficult when playing Unite. The team as a whole had reported that they are working towards having better communication with one another in hopes of improving on all of their games and Unite in particular.

In addition, Aayson Baker, a sophomore player, says, “I have been playing Pokemon Unite for three years now.” He adds, “I play like five matches a day.” He actually just got done playing a match and scored 300 points and over 30 kills. But, just as his teammate Grayson described, Aayson shares, “You have to rely on your teammates because it’s a team game.” Aayson is a successful player, but if he were to ever feel overwhelmed, he shares his success strategy: “I try and do the best I can. If something’s going on, I just have to close up the game.” It seems that the reset is what helps him to perform better later on. The ability to focus and reset is a valuable skill for him and potentially the whole team. 

Feel free, and welcome, to catch up with the e-Sports team next week on October 26th through the 29th!

The week of October 12th-15th, the e-Sports team has managed pressure and came out on top. The Pokemon Unite against Advanced Technology Center match was lost 0-2. The Street Fighter match was won 3-1 against Muhelenberg High School. The Smash Brothers team won 3-1 against Marion County High School. To finish the week, the Mario Kart team won 2-1 against Great Crossing High School. 

This week’s matches had great outcomes and helped the progression of the team. The pressure is helping shape the team into a better unit. Carter Jones, a Senior player, described the team’s Mario Kart match as being “very nerve-wracking and very intense.” This isn’t a surprise given that there was a lot of riding on that particular match. Carson shares, “our number one spot in the state was at stake in our journey to an undefeated season.” Ultimately, the team won after improving communication and working really hard towards their goal.

Similarly, Easton Bowling shares his perspective on this match and how he and his teammates were able to come out on top, “As soon as our new coach told us to get our heads in the game and focus on good positive attitudes, we can do better, and that's exactly what happened. We kicked it into high gear and we won,” Easton says. These skills, suggested by his coach and executed by his teammates, led them to yet another season win. 

On another note, Easton advises anyone interested in games to “come on down and give it a try.” E-sports takes place in room 171 after school every day Monday-Thursday. Easton talks about how he joined the team his sophomore year, “ever since then, I’ve just been stopping by here every Thursday playing Mario Kart for the team.” 

The next matches will take place in (Mr. Laymon’s) room, 171, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

This week, September 28th through October 1st, eSports has continued to work hard in improving their collective gaming and skills. Playing a match of Smash Brothers, Pokemon Unite, Street Fighter, and two matches of Mario Kart, the team had many moments of success and improvement. 

The match scores for this week showed a Pokemon Unite loss of 0-2, Street Fighter win of 3-0, Smash Brothers loss of 1-3, and a Mario Kart win of 1-0. 

Luca Carballal, a sophomore, plays Smash Ultimate and gives distinct commentary of how he hopes to improve his game. “I use my counter a lot, and I think that’s a big issue,” Carballal shares. There is a consistent need for group communication within these matches. Carballal expressed, “we need to obviously work together because you know everybody plays a different character…” Carballal shared what he enjoyed about the game as well, “I think it’s just the competitiveness… and it brings people together.” Carballal really has a positive outlook for his team going forward and reports, “I’m excited to see what we can do with this.”

Another player Clayton Mastriani, shares his experiences with not just Smash Brothers, but also Mario Kart. As a junior, Mastriani is a bit of an older player, and actually plays constantly in both games. A unique playing strategy he shared this week was playing with a lag. “[In Super Smash Brothers] there has been some internet lag, which is inherent, but it has kind of changed our gameplay styles because it’s a very fast-paced game,” Mastriani shares. He went on to report how they managed this issue. “One thing we’ve worked on is trying to figure out how to play with the lag and play alongside instead of complaining…” Mastriani says. In regards to Mario Kart, Mastriani tells about what his team learned from the matches, “yeah, in one of our first few games, we went against some really good team… It really taught us, and showed us some ways we could do better.” These experiences allowed them to learn and progress to be ranked number one in the state for Mario Kart. Mastriani shared his thoughts on the future of his team, “I have really high hopes for all of our teams, especially Mario Kart, and I hope the teams can continue to do great.” 

The following e-Sports matches will consistently take place Mondays through Thursdays with differing opponents after fall break.

Boyle County eSports team won two out of the three overall matches played this week, September 21st through the 24th. The team worked hard, made progress, and had great success within the week. 

On Monday, Pokemon was played, and Boyle started the week with a 0-2 loss (playing best of three). Moving forward, Boyle won their best of 5 match in Street Fighter on Tuesday, 3-1. Later this week, they won their best-of-five Smash Brothers match 3-2. Unfortunately, the team’s Mario Kart match was postponed for the following Monday due to technical difficulties. 

The team has given verbal reports of various struggles and faults, but then made preparations, corrections, and successes. After the Pokemon Unite match, Evan Moore, a senior esports competitor, reported: “Yeah, we had a little bit of rough team communication, and we needed to connect more as a team…” He went on to describe how they moved forward to correct. He responded, “We made a lot more communication that was necessary and took out the unnecessary communication…” As a result, he said, “Yes, we got a lot more points, a lot more kills, and a lot more group synergy in the second round.”

Later on in the week, Logan Clark, a sophomore on the team, gave a testament to their Street Fighter play. Clark mentioned his preparation for the match, such as “Playing the game, watching videos, and just getting in the right mindset of winning.” Clark went on to say what he felt he could improve on: “...work on wakeups and just reaction time to a lot of anti-airs and just more on that…” 

All in all, the team played great. They are working hard to improve and are competing Monday through Thursday next week, 9/28-10/01.

By: Austin Boyd

The Boyle County Highschool Esports team had another awesome week from October 20th-24th.

 Each player showed how much they’ve improved this season. On October 20th, the Rebels took down Danville high with a clean 2-0 win, led by Alex Harrison and Maya Sinsh. 

Then on October 22, They beat Mercer county in a close match, with Jordan Lee and Sam Ng making clutch plays to finish strong.

The biggest game came on October 24, when the Rebels faced a team that placed third in the state last year. Boyle County stayed focused and pulled off a huge 2-1 victory that had everyone cheering.

Coach Laymon said the next day,“ The other team we went against got third last year , but we beat them this year”

It was a big week for the Rebels, and if they keep playing like this, the season’s only going up from here.

By: Kolten Leake 

The first game was on Tuesday, September 23rd, Boyle stayed at home and played Dupont Manuel in Street Fighter which Boyle won 6 to 2. 

The Second game was on Wednesday, September 24th and Boyle played at home against Holy Cross. Super Smash Brothers was the game of choice, which Boyle won 6 to 2!

 The final game that occurred was on Thursday, September 25th and Boyle played at home against Lafayette in Mario Kart. Lafayette drove in the win for this tournament winning 2-0.

The most efficient player on Wednesday for Smash Brothers was Clayton Mastroianni and this is what he had to say, “It went pretty well, the other team put up a good fight but we prevailed, and as for our next game I took a peak at our opponents and they seem like they’re pretty good. They have a similar record to ours, so I think one of the best things we can do is train up and prepare!” 

Make sure to wish our Boyle Esports team good luck in their next three matches next week on September 29th, 30th, and October 3rd !!!

The Boyle County ESports team last week competed in a variety of games, League of Legends, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers and Chess. 

Boyle stood firm winning both League of Legends and Smash Brothers, dominating the playing field in both. Although Boyle conceded two losses both being Mario Kart and Chess, they still stood high and won both rounds of Smash Brothers and one round of League of Legends.

Aaron Gorley said “ Week seven is a hype up week as we roll off into playoffs and we're getting everything together for a postseason run, but overall everything is going really good.” With that being said Gorley and his team are fighting to make a deep run this season. 

After this week's competition Boyle’s playoffs will begin