Students from in and around the UK’s capital city channelled their inner Ronaldo’s on Saturday as we saw the third Mario Strikers qualifier event take place at King’s College London!
The room filled up quickly from the moment doors opened at 9am, with event participants eager to get stuck straight into friendlies so they could get warmed up for the intense Smash bracket ahead of them.
While most students that turned up were from London universities, we saw a few devoted folks travel in from Cambridge, Portsmouth and beyond, which just goes to show how special these events are. New friendships and rivalries started to form in the morning, and after some time, the first tournament commenced - Smash Ultimate Singles.
The first few rounds went by quickly, with top seeded players predictably working their ways through the ranks. A big upset in the Winners Quarter-Finals though saw Kendrick Olimar, the top seeded player for the day, lose 0-3 to SS11. He fought valiantly through the losers bracket, however, making his way to Loser Semi-Finals where he faced off against SS11 again, this time winning 3-1. Despite this victory, Kendrick Olimar unfortunately ended up taking 3rd overall, not quite managing to secure a win in the Loser Final.
Swistak from Cambridge and Bassle from UAL were our two finalists, and their fight during the Grand Final was legendary, with crowds watching and cheering them on as they took the match to the 5th set. Swistak came out victorious after a tense final battle, and the crowd erupted. What a result!
The next tournament to start after Smash Singles was Mario Strikers Singles, and let me tell you this was a lot of fun to watch. Players seemed to be really enjoying themselves, and “SIUUUUUU” was yelled many time whenever goals were being scored.
Now, we’ve gotta talk about SVZ, who was one of the most notable players in the tournament, and a force to be reckoned with. He was knocked down into Losers bracket after the first round, but had a clean sweep all the way through, making it to the grand final against Bilbo. How insane is that? Bilbo won in the end (massive congratulations to him), but SVZ will still be going to the finals at Warwick as he made top 2, which is a huge achievement in itself.
Last but certainly not least, we had the Mario Strikers Doubles tournament, which was a bit shorter than the others but still had so much hype around it. Both SVZ and Bilbo participated (in separate teams), but got knocked out by gbsfranca and Or4nge, who did pretty well in the Singles tournament, but seemed to just be a dominating powerhouse as a duo. The pair won the tournament in the end, and we’ll be seeing them at the live Warwick finals too.
So, eager for some Smash and Strikers action after reading this overview? Well you’re in luck, because we’ll be having a last chance qualifier at the Warwick finals on Saturday 10th December. Come along and compete! We’d love to see you there.
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