The BRHS Esports team competed against schools from the New York metro area in the fall Garden State Esports tournament at Georgian Court University in New Jersey on Nov. 23. Adryan Valdez-Reyes, Ayden Lema, Jason Fuentes and Julio Valdez-Reyes represented the school.

Monique Paes, the coach of the Esports team, appreciated the team effort.  “I’m just happy that they were all there and they were grateful,” she said. “We may have not won the quarterfinals, but they did their best.”

Regina Schaffer Carr, the vice president of the GSE, said “We have 56 unique schools playing.  Then we have another 30 or 40 that came with the walk up tournaments. It is crowded. We were supposed to be in the gym which is brand new and huge. But, there was another event that kicked us out.”

She added that the tournament also attracts local colleges, which hope to recruit top players.

One of the tournament’s top players, Lucas Velasquez, has been gaming almost his entire life.  “I started playing Smash Bros in general when I was 2- years-old on a Nintendo 64,” he said. “Shout out to my mom. And then when Ultimate came out, I bought the game on release date and just been playing it since.”

During the tournament, he displayed amazing moves that come with experience, practice and confidence. “My first tournament was when I was 11 years old,” he said.

Lucas and his teammates on the High Tech Smash Bros team from Secaucus, N.J., won first place.

His advice for gamers who get nervous is to set the nerves aside and just keeping playing.

BRHS plans to compete in two more tournaments in early March.