Hitfall is a Rivals of Aether major tournament series hosted twice a year at Xanadu Games in Laurel Park, Maryland.

In 2022 I set out to start a new regional-level Rivals of Aether tournament in the Maryland/Virginia region, and enlisted the help of local Rivals player and friend NME (Max Bailey). Coincidentally, Maryland TO and Xanadu Games employee Jentan (Jennifer Sheridan) was looking to start a new Rivals event around the same time. We decided to join forces and work on a new event that would become Hitfall, with the first installment happening in March 2023.

While we originally envisioned Hitfall as a regional-level tournament, our promotion of the event paid off more than we expected. Hitfall 1 almost doubled our initial entrant goal, reaching 90 attendees that included notable top players from outside the region. The newfound success of the event would gain the attention of the wider Rivals community.

While deliberating over plans for future Hitfall events, we were asked by developer Aether Studios to take part in Season 8 of the Rivals Championship Series, the official annual major circuit for the competitive Rivals of Aether scene. With community anticipation and developer backing, Hitfall 2 took place on August 19th-20th as an expanded two-day major tournament.

Beginning in 2022, I began participating as a TO and volunteer in local MDVA events.

In Summer 2022, I started up a new monthly tournament series, Smash & Co., as co-head TO alongside File (Ian Heron). Featuring brackets for Project+, Rivals of Aether, and Ultimate. Smash & Co. aimed to highlight smaller games with a passionate playerbase to the larger Smash Ultimate community. The first Smash & Co. was a success, maxing out entry cap for each bracket and seeing 40% of Ultimate Singles entrants participate in at least one other game.

Over the course of 2022 and into 2023, I helped cultivate the local Maryland/Virginia competitive Rivals of Aether scene. I revamped the regional Discord server and networked with other local TOs to create a central hub for our communication within the server. I was co-founder and co-TO of the biweekly online regional tournament, Mid-Atlantic Destruction, which ran across Summer through Winter 2022. I headed the introduction of a regional PR system with procedures for tournament and player qualification and PR panel creation.

These changes helped to revitalize the server and the MDVA Rivals of Aether scene, and concurrently local tournaments in the region have seen increased and sustained across the past year.

After stepping away from my role as President, I wanted to remain involved with GMU Esports as we returned to in-person events. I decided to become a Tournament Organizer and help run Bring More Setups (BMS), GMU Esports’ weekly Smash tournament. In addition to helping with the Smash Ultimate Bracket and assisting in its stream production, I founded a Rivals of Aether side bracket that has since blossomed into its own part of the BMS community. While I was TO of the Rivals side bracket, I also organized the PR panel for each semester.

Over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, we held additional larger tournaments such as BMS 100: HD Remix. Featuring brackets for Melee, Smash 4, Project+, and Ultimate, HD Remix was a celebration of BMS reaching 100 weekly events across 5 years and 4 Smash games.

Elected as President of the GMU Esports club in late 2019, I began leading the initiative to transition the organization from a club into an official school program in early 2020. After assembling a group of the club’s more senior staff and players, we set about compiling and authoring a 17-page proposal for a potential GMU Esports program within the Student Involvement department at GMU. The full text of the proposal can be found here.

The finished proposal was presented to Lauren Long, the director of Student Involvement. After further discussions, in June 2020, GMU Esports became part of the department, receiving resources and backing from the university.

I continued in my position as President through the program’s first year. Over the spring and summer of 2020, I collaborated with Lauren and members of the proposal group to create the new program infrastructure. During this time we revamped the Discord server(s), restructured student staff, brought on new members, created transition procedures, set out program goals and missions, and more.

While my year as President of the new program took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, I took advantage of our inability to hold in-person events and prioritized making sure we would be ready when they returned. As such, we focused on ironing out our new staff workflow and content pipeline and set about acquiring resources for our teams and events. We also established the new program's online presence for the student body at large. Activities such as monthly online forums, pick-up games, intramural competitions, and an online GAMEmason lead to us doubling our Discord server size to over 1,000 members and becoming one of the largest departmental student organizations at GMU.

In late 2018, Student Involvement at GMU set out to create GAMEmason, an annual on-campus convention that would engage students by providing events related to various fields in gaming. A variety of events were held, including workshops, celebrity speakers, and tournaments, with topics ranging from esports to game development, and everything in between.

VCOI (Virginia Collegiate Overwatch Invitational) was created as an in-state Overwatch tournament between Virginia colleges and universities. The initial rounds of the tournament would be played online, culminating in a third place match and grand finals match that would be played on-stage at the Center for the Arts as part of the GAMEmason event lineup. I was responsible for organizing the tournament itself, which involved reaching out to other Virginia schools, securing casters and talent, scheduling and administering games, and more. Within the GAMEmason planning committee, I often was working with the Center of the Arts personnel to make sure the finals could happen day-of.

The first GAMEmason took place on April 5th, 2019, and surpassed attendance expectations by over double the amount of attendees, making the event a resounding success and putting a spotlight on GMU Esports. I have continued to participate on the GAMEmason planning committee over the past few years and returned as the main tournament organizer for OVCI (Overwatch Virginia Community Invitational, formerly VCOI) in 2020 and 2021. Beginning in 2022, I have moved away from directly TOing OVCI, but still hold an active role in the preparation of GAMEmason and GMU Esports’ tournaments.

GAMEmason 2020 was planned to be in-person, with the OVCI finals making a return and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate expanding to a full tournament. However, as the world shut down due to COVID, the event was canceled and only GMU Esports' tournaments were continued in an online format. In 2021, GAMEmason returned in a completely online format, with the Smash Ultimate tournament being replaced by Super Smash Bros. Melee for one year only, and OVCI happening in full force.

In 2022, GAMEmason returned offline. I lead the organizing of the featured Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament, BMS @ GAMEmason 2022. Other aspects of the event, such as the OVCI Finals, celebrity guests, live music, and more, returned.

My main responsibility as Media Manager for GMU Esports' Overwatch team was to plan the team’s online presence across various social media platforms, mainly focusing on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

This included utilizing my skills as a graphic designer to create visual content with consistent branding across platforms in order to instill team familiarity with online audiences. I also designed and created the logo, branding, and visual graphics for the Virginia Community Overwatch Invitational (VCOI), an in-state tournament between VA colleges and universities hosted by GMU Esports. Additionally, I helped curate, and in some cases create, short-form and long-form video content with our team editors, including gameplay montages, interviews, and memes. Examples of my work on social media can be found below.

Another responsibility I had was to network between the team and outside organizations, schools, and individuals. I helped GMU Esports partner and participate in events with Washington Vice & Virtue, Washington Justice, and other sponsors.