Coming into the new year, our Trojan Esports teams have had overall success with the start of their season. Both Marvel Rivals and Rocket League have found success with their first matches, meanwhile Smash Bros was just short of theirs.
Our Rocket League is on a mission to defend their status of reigning champs by defeating Palo Verde High School in a devastating 3-0 sweep. In game 1, we scored a total of 6 goals with everyone on the team getting 2 each. The 2nd game was even better than before with Valley going 9-1, with Jackson Kuyoth ('26) scoring 6 of the 9 goals. Palo Verde fared no better in the 3rd game with Valley taking the final game 6-0 and newcomer Asher Hanzal ('26) scoring 4 of the 6 goals. With the level of dominance and team coordination shown in this match, it makes it hard to have any doubts that the Trojans can secure another Championship and even national title.
The Smash Bros team, on the other hand, just fell short of a win against Dobson High School, barely losing 2-3. "Going into the game we knew what and who we we're dealing with but due to some decision-making mistakes, we couldn't secure the tie breaker game" says varsity captain Mecca Brisbon ('26). It's safe to say the Trojan Smash team is still adjusting to the new rule change in scoring, because now as long as you have at least one good player on your team it makes it to where you can still win due to them being able to go again in the instance of a tie breaker game. Nonetheless, there is still a lot of the season left, so a comeback is inevitable.
For it being their debut season, our Marvel Rivals team has come out with a bang; they won 3-1 against Basha High School. Our team dominated the first game on point control, not letting Basha secure their objective once. Thanks to Giovanni Pasqua ('26), Andrew Heck ('26), and Noah Bumpous ('26), we were able to keep up the constant pressure while having minimal deaths. Shout out to our youngest player, Seth Gentala ('26), for getting MVP as the tank role for 2 of the 3 games that we won. Valley is projected to be one of the best teams in the state for Rivals, and the overall team composition makes that obvious. We're all excited to see how much of a name they make for themselves this season.
