In our fourth installment of The Student Athlete Behind the Screen Story Series, the Esports game discussed will be Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (SSBU) and our featured Esports Student Athlete will be Sofronio Lorenzo. Sofronio is a senior at the college, who majors in communications, but more specifically, design and digital media. Originally, from Staten Island, Sofronio, is one of the first members of the gaming club when it was first created a few years ago and has been an advocate to have Esports competition at CSI. He also goes by his gamertag "Frio", which is fitting as he one of three players on the SSBU team, who had the ability to freeze the competition nearly single handily at times during the match.
 
For those that may not be aware, SSBU is a Nintendo Switch game that has become widely renowned in the Esports competitive realm in recent years. Released in 2018, SSBU is the 5^th installment of the series crossover fighting game with many well-known characters across the Nintendo universe (I.E. Mario (Super Mario) and Link (Legend of Zelda) as well as the addition of third-party characters from other games (I.E. Ryu (Street Fighter and Cloud (Final Fantasy)). Since SSBU is generally a one-on-one fighter, in competition, it is played in a 3v3 nine-stock battle format. Each school has a team of three players with nine total lives among each team and the first team to take all nine lives from the opponents three players wins the round, in what is a best of three rounds to win the match. A similarity of a traditional sport would be that of singles tennis where they are a team of players but each player competes one-on-one in hopes of winning their matches to achieve the team win. Sofronio describes the competitive gameplay for us stating, "Competitively it is a very mind-heavy game, (you) have to be on top of your movements, your opponent's movements, (and you) have to be able to sometimes predict what your opponent can do in certain situations…it is very heavy on your mental game as well as your reflects and muscle memory"
 
Sofronio has been a gamer for much of his life, at a young age, he recalls seeing his sister play Final Fantasy and that is when his journey began in the gaming world. What drew him to play competitively was a friend who had shown him a compilation video of Super Smash Bros. Melee back in the early 2000s that featured a multitude of combos from pro gamers, one in particular named "Hungrybox" who he was amazed by and ultimate started watching more and learning how to play the game in that fashion.  Upon coming to CSI four years ago, he was an advocate to have competitive gaming at CSI and stayed the course. Unfortunately, it took a pandemic to get us there, but he was happy and surprised and added "when it did happen, I knew everyone on the team already, (and we) played smash everyday together until we got that official announcement (to compete in the Spring 2021 East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC))".
 
In the ECAC, SSBU was one of the most popular games for colleges that had over 60 colleges across all divisions compete in their conference in the Esports game of SSBU. Although, Sofronio, and his teammates had an outstanding season, going 10-3 overall (including playoffs), and received the number three seed in the 64-team playoff bracket, making it all the way to the final eight, where they ultimately lost to a worthy opponent. However, due to their dominance in the regular season, the team received an at-large bid to compete in the Collegiate Esports National Championship (CENC).  Sofronio would describe his experience as both fun and frustrating at times, adding, "The fun aspect for me is I love going out finding new opponents, figuring out what to do against certain characters, (assess) certain people's mindsets, (and) how they play. On the frustrating side, sometimes you won't be able to crack down on what they're doing and even if you do the opponent can switch it up on you and you need to find out what to do afterwards." What this says is simple, like any other sport, there is a fun side and a frustrating side to it and although no athlete plays to lose, all athletes, Esports or not, want to get better, some even more than others.
 
As the conversation shifted to his insights on Esports versus traditional sports, Sofronio, without hesitation, said Esports should be considered a sport. He talked about the concept of athlete training and how although, training for an Esports competition may not be as physically demanding as in traditional physical sports but the training in itself is relatively the same and still drains you physically and especially mentally. He went on to state, "they (Esports athletes) are rooted in competition. They have to have those (similar) physical strong abilities; they require practice, countless, countless hours. Some Esports teams go to stadiums just like traditional sports (and) both Esports and traditional sports are cheered on by fans, what's a sport without fans"? I for one could not agree more, what is a sport without fans? The answer is simple; it is not a sport without its fans cheering their favorite teams or favorite players on-screen or in-person, thinking to themselves, I can be that one day.  
 
When asked about the terms "athlete" and "gamer", Sofronio considers himself both an athlete and a gamer, as he should, but stated his reason why, "coming from somebody that works for a company of sports where our slogan is, if you have a body you're an athlete, I take that whole heartily no matter what body type you have". This sentiment could not be truer, we have heard stories of athletes around the world who have pitched with only one arm (Jim Abbott, NYY) or ran in the Olympics despite having been born with no legs. The bottom line is they still had a body and utilized what they did have to become the athlete of their choosing. As mentioned in previous stories, Esports is still roughly 30 years young, meaning there is still a generation of new Esports professional and collegiate players that we do not know yet. With that in mind, Sofriono ended with this, "As younger generations grow and start seeing these new games and Epsorts (specific) games coming out, they are going to be asking what if (I) can do this, everyone is going to see Esports as an actually sport and realize this takes a lot (to be an Esports athlete)".
 
Lastly, Sofronio aspires to work for Nintendo and possibly animate or design a game in the future that he hopes will be considered as an Esports competitive game one day. He is also a part of ASAP and the Verrazano Horrors Program at CSI. He loves playing video games with his friends; however, he also likes playing different titles to get a feel for them while at the same time, understanding their dynamics, mechanics and indifferences that he will utilize when it comes time for him to create his own masterpiece. I want to thank Sofronio for his time during this interview and there is no doubt in our minds that he will succeed in this endeavor; we look forward to seeing his name as a game developer from the College of Staten Island. 
 
Week Five, our final week, will feature the game of Rocket League (RL) and the 2021 Spring East Coast College (ECC) RL Champion, Samuel Rozenfeld, be sure to check it out!