As I walked into the dimly lit room, the first thing I noticed was several rows of computers lined up. A plethora of people where gathered at the reception desk, all checking themselves into the main event. The League of Legends Tournament. I waited in line for what seemed like ages, but in reality was only a few short minutes. I felt my stomach ache, I hadn't had much to eat, and I was beginning to pay for it. This was my first tournament in League of Legends, and I wanted to make it count. I wrote down my name in the registration form and then checked the box next to the team I was associated with. They gave me a wrist band and told me to set-up my computer anywhere I'd like. I waited for my team mate Steve to check in and then we walked out to his car and recovered our computers.

We set-up our computers together with our team. Kevin and Adam had already arrived an hour or so before us, so they had some spots saved. We had arrived around the same time as most of the crowd, so it was complete chaos trying to find the right input cables and outlets to plug everything into. My Key board didn’t have rubber grips on the bottom, so I had to duct tape it to the table so it wouldn’t slide around. When we all finally got settled in, the tournament organizer randomly assigned the first matchup.

There were 16 total teams in this competition, and in order to get to the finals you had to play four total games. The top three performing teams would continue on to the tournament style best out of three finals bracket. That meant we would have to win at least 3 out of the 4 games if we wanted to get into the finals. My team was amongst the lowest in both ranking and overall synergy and skill. We had no prior practice as a team, other than me and Steve practicing a little bit together. Of any team in the tournament, we were projected for dead last. We were only in the tournament for fun though, so we honestly didn't care what place we came in. I still wanted to show how well of a player I was, and out of everyone on my team, I wanted to win the most.

Once we found out who our first match-up was, we shook hands and wished each other good luck. Before a game starts, each team has the chance to ban 3 champions they wish. I did a little research and found the top performing players on the other team, and we banned out the best champion for each of those players. After that we would select the champion we wished to use. I was able to get one of my best champions at the time, and I felt very confident that we could win. My confidence slowly began fade. Once the game started I felt a bunch of different emotions. I shoved any thought of uncertainty away and kept my mind at the task at hand, and that task was winning this game.

Unfortunately someone walking by tripped over the extension cord and we all lost power. That was a big disappointment because it was 15 minutes into the game and we had a hefty lead. After several minutes of technical difficulties, we finally got everything sorted out and we had to restart the match. As we loaded onto the rift a second time, I reminded myself to stay positive. After almost an hour of struggling to keep the team together, I see the words that have been the bane of my existence. In big red font, the word defeat lays across my screen. I am shattered by what lies before me. I cannot imagine seeing that word 3 more times, and I know I won’t allow it to happen.

I took a quick break and walked over to the concessions and bought myself a cookie. It didn’t feel like as a team we did that bad, we just made simple mistakes that the enemy team took advantage of. They were a good team, but we easily could have won. I returned to my computer, even more determined this time to win.

As I waited for the other teams to finish up there games, I watched my friend Steve play Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. After roughly 20 minutes of messing around, the next set of matches were ready to begin. Since we lost our last game, we were put against another team that also lost. This was our time to shine. We barely lost to the last team, which means this game should be easy. Man was I ever wrong. The game only lasted about 25 minutes before we had enemy minions flooding our base. I was again faced with defeat. This time I wasn’t as let down about it though. We still had 2 more games to play, and if we won both, we could easily place 6th or 7th.  

As the other teams finish up there matches, I looked around at some of the other players screens. They were all really good players. I had a quick chat with the player on the other side of me, his team had won one game and lost the other. I wished him good luck on his last games, and then I walked over to chat with my team and go over strategies. Little did I know our top lanner, Adam, was quitting on us. Apparently he just wasn’t having as much fun as he thought he would. He was at least decent enough to find someone to fill in though, so in the end it wasn’t really a big deal. The new guy that replaced him seemed like a really good player, far better than Adam was, so I just brushed it off and got ready for the next game.

As we loaded into the next game, I felt a rush of adrenaline. I was ready to dominate! After 30 minutes of complete devastation of the enemy team. I kind of felt bad for the other team. They ended up not winning a single game throughout the series. Even though I felt bad, I was extremely happy to pull out a win. That meant we wouldn’t end in dead last, and that was more than enough to make me happy.

As the tournament came to a close we ended up losing our last game, putting us in 14th place. We were pretty disappointed, but at the same time, we were projected to come in a dead last, so we weren’t too upset over it. The best part about it was that for us it was all for fun, so our placement didn’t matter much to us. I still wish we got more serious over the whole thing, but in the end it was a very fun experience and I had a lot of fun.