The Bow Falcons and Pembroke Spartans esports teams aspired to become Super Smash Bros. (SSB) state champions on Sunday at SNHU. Facing tough competition with 13 participating schools and over 50 contestants, both fell short of claiming the title but got a taste of the growing passion for esports around the state.

The tournament was hosted on the second floor of Southern New Hampshire’s dining hall, in a conference room that fit dozens of coaches, teams and a huge turnout of spectators attentively watching the action around the room. With six games happening simultaneously during the seeding round-robin, there was more than enough excitement to energize the fans.

“We, as an association, really wanted to enter into it slowly in offering something that was appropriate for our athletes to participate in and would be manageable for an athletic director to pick up and start offering. So that’s why we’ve been working with Rocket League and Super Smash Brothers, where they’re very low entry-level costs and expenses,” the NHIAA’s Nate Chaput said.

SSB is a platform fighting game made by Nintendo that features characters from other video games and is distinct in its gameplay compared to other titles. It has a very cartoonish style and very little graphic violence, which sets the stage for different characters with unique special abilities to knock an opponent off of the platform.

Each team was given 12 stocks (think lives in an arcade game) per match, and each player was given three stocks. Thus, in every match, the teams battled it out until one knocked the other team out 12 times (beating its four top players).

It’s one of the esports offered by SNHU as part of their varsity program so, past the fun competition, it was also an opportunity for players to be scouted and showcase their skills to continue competing at the next level.

Bow

One of Bow’s first esports players, John Monroe, is an SSB specialist and is now on SNHU’s esports team. He stuck around campus and helped his former teammates, one of whom is his younger brother, Carter Monroe, and tried to push the Falcons to victory. The elder Monroe a freshman computer science major, and he said that he’s enjoyed learning the intricacies of game design through his studies and esports team.

“I felt like I’ve gotten a lot better. I’ve learned like more skill sets, and I learned more important skills coming in here that were really comfortable,” he said. “I would say in meeting more people, and esports helped me when I couldn’t play any other sport, so it helps include more people who wouldn’t have been included before in any other sport.”

All week the team worked toward competing at the highest level. The Falcons, coached by Sam Dixon and Allan Sheehy, started strong and were undefeated through the semifinals before falling short to Londonderry in the championship match. The two had faced each other earlier in the day during the round-robin and Bow had pulled off a close 10-12 victory. (In other words, Bow took Londonderry’s 12 stocks and lost 10 themselves.)

“Super appreciative that our school embraced it, all the other schools embraced it, that NHIAA is recognizing us as an official sport, that we get to have this championship,” Sheehy said. “A lot of people sort of scoff at it, and it’s just nice to see that there are so many people willing to acknowledge the hard work that goes into it: time, effort, sportsmanship, teamwork, collaboration.”

The Falcons would go on to lose to Londonderry in the championship, but the performance was still a huge success as they took down Bedford, a friendly rival, in the semifinals.

Bow’s team continues to grow and it’s expanding into other game titles to get more kids engaged. At SNHU, Dixon and Sheehy handed out small fliers advertising a Mario Kart tournament to other coaches. The connections forged through these tournaments have only grown and many of the players said they’ve made a lot of friends through them, so for now Bow will continue doing its thing and will try to return to reclaim the title next year.

“There’s a lot more people here than last time and I really like it, just because the noises that are made, especially on the big screen where big things happen, the cool smash attack combos, everybody loves it. You don’t even need to be understand how the game works to really be entertained by it,” Bow senior Matthias Hansen said.

Pembroke

Pembroke returned with a slightly different team than its Rocket League team, which fell in the bracket at the state championship in December. The Spartans are a smaller program compared to Bow but also had a successful day at SNHU.

One of the team’s players, Camden Ouellette, said that playing SSB was always a hobby of his but that he’s very grateful for the opportunity to compete in a state championship setting.

He’s somewhat concerned about the viability of the program coached by Brandon Rich, a math teacher, because most of the team were upperclassmen. Rich and Ouellette both expressed that incoming freshmen will hopefully be excited to join and see that it as an opportunity to turn a hobby into something bigger.

Overall, though, Pembroke made it all the way to the semifinals but fell to Londonderry. Each team had a unique strategy and different assets at their disposal, so it was as challenging strategically as it was to practice physically. As teams grow and competition expands it will only get more challenging but similarly to Bow, Pembroke already has a head start.

“Trystan Currier, our newest member, was our secret weapon this year. No one knew what to expect from the unfamiliar face, so when he came out swinging, everyone was impressed. Without Trystan opening each match, we were never going to make it as far as we did,” Rich said.

“Graeme Hagland followed Trystan with a mastery of Jigglypuff that had the entire room on the edge of their seats. Josh Mariano was our tank-buster and Camdem Ouellette held up the back end of the lineup, ready to play clean-up wherever he could.”

Alexander Rapp can be reached at arapp@cmonitor.com.