Its approximately 1am PST, I'm laying down in my bed after a extremely long day. It started at around 4:30 AM, I couldn't sleep any longer out of pure anxiety, I had been preparing for SCR for about a solid month of just dojo mode practice, getting my timing down in hope i don't drop crucial combos out of sloppy execution. Now I messed up by not attending my weekly meet up with Plague for the entire month of January due to car issues, so i had no choice but to train at home by myself, now I don't want to blame that on my poor showing at SCR but i think that may have a small factor to play. Since I was up so early I got into mental preparation instead and tried to push away any nerves I felt.
So around 10 AM Plague and I arrive at UC Irvine and set up the VF station for some casuals, bright and early Oneida, Soakrates and Airegin are already getting in practice, I chose to sit back and watch since I would be playing them both in tourney and didn't want to give away any noticeable play habits.
Pools start early and already people are being eliminated, and my first match in my pool just happened to be against Airegin. He and I both play Wolf, so going into the match I knew what to expect as far as mix ups were concerned, but during our fight my mind simple drew a blank, and it were if i was fresh picking up the game again MID MATCH! needless to say the nerves got to me, I simply cracked, everything Air hit me with i saw coming from a mile away! I was disgusted at myself for losing a set to my very own character and even worse losing to set ups that I do myself constantly! The early loss sent me into loser's bracket where I had to fight DurViener (a local friend and WNF attendee), I simply could not give Dur any room to breath during our fight, I knew what El Blaze is capable of thanks to countless online matches with DaRockReaper, so I gave Dur 100% of my effort to avoid being eliminated entirely and in the end I came out 3 to 1, sealing my spot out of my pool and into top 8.
Throughout the day tons of other events were going on for games like AE, DOA, Marvel 3, Guilty gear, I wandered around, played matches, and scoped out matches as pools wrapped up. About one hour after we finished our VF pools, top 8 began. We were to be playing on the mini stage set up and live stream to thousands of online viewers, the pressure was on. My match was to be with Oneida, a Lau player from NY. In my head I thought I had this match up completely understood since I have dabbled in using Lau as an alt character, but in this game not only do you have to fight the character but the player himself and I had absolutely zero experience fighting with Oneida since this was the first day we met, I had no clue he followed up most staggers with 6P+K, a speedier solution to the popular 4K. I also noticed his love for the Koekei stance launcher and I did the most I could to avoid being hit with it. He had won the first match in our set, I had to shake the loss off immediately and give him my all, the second match was almost completely in my favor, I was up 2 rounds and got Oneida into 46PG switch launch, but as fate would have it, I DROPPED MY COMBO! If i had completed it Oneida's Lau would have been ringed out and I would have advanced, but Oneida seemed to capitalize off the momentum lost off my dropped combo and fight his way back to win 2 to 1. Our match was very close going 1 to 1 and running it down to the last round of the last match. I was eliminated from the tournament at that point.
From there on I was in the shoes of a spectator, I couldn't help but to be angry with myself and my performance since I know I could do better. If anything I will use this as fuel to do better at Sega Cup. The finals finished with norcal's Airegin and Soakrates taking 1st and 2nd and local tekken masher BL taking 3rd with Jacky....But congrats to Airegin for taking first place, it's always good to see another Wolf in the spotlight. Overall SCR was a very fun experience and a professionally run event, I can't wait for next year!
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