South Jersey has been a desolate region for Smash activity. Aside from the local tournaments at Salty Joystiq and Scoot to Scooter Dave’s, there has always been a thirst for larger tournaments with better payouts. And that thirst isn’t being quenched by an established organization or company, but by a group of students who formed a club in Kingsway Regional High School in the small township of Woolwich, NJ.

It started with a thread posted on the r/smashbros subreddit by the user ‘musicman97’ that linked to this Imgur picture. The first thread appeared on the sub on September 6th, 2014 at 2:07pm and hit 73,000 views on Imgur. Another thread submitted by the user ‘Fallsey37’ in the r/gaming subreddit exploded with 1,700,00 views on Imgur.

But the fame did not stop there. The school’s Video Game Club elected Jesica Weiland as President and the club began planning their first tournament, K-Smash. Their first tournament was hosted on Jan. 23rd, 2015 with 66 players entering Melee and 54 entering in Project M. The user ‘sbo0919’ submitted another Reddit thread to chronicle the journey from playing in bathrooms to playing on live streams in their own school. It reached the front page and the accompanying Imgur album of the tournament garnered 1,000,000 views.

When asked about the viral success that their school and tournament achieved, Weiland said, “I had no idea we would get over a million views. It made me realize that we could make this into something bigger than we ever thought”. However, their process for the second K-Smash took them away from hosting within their school building. Just a few weeks before the tournament, the school had not brought the proposal to the Board of Education and so they had to look for a complete new venue.

“After about 2 months of fighting with the school, I and the other two main TO’s Billy Applebaum, and Mike Polisi, decided to cut all ties with the school, purchase insurance [ourselves], find a new venue, and put our own money into the tournament, along with the help from Cliff Phillips and Juan Duarte. We came together as a family to make this tournament work.” -Jesica Weiland

The switch of venues posed two additional problems: no pot bonus and no insurance. The prize bonus would not be provided by the school anymore. But Weiland and the group contributed the bonus out of their own pockets. Six days before the event, the insurance had yet to be purchased. Weiland shares that “for three days we tried to come up with the insurance, until on Thursday two days before the tournament, Mike Polisi, Co-TO, decided to pay for it all upfront, and basically saved the tournament. We really owe it all to him.”

K-Smash 2.0 became another success with over 80 players and some popular names in attendance such as Cactuar, Dizzkidboogie, and DP. Overall, players from Philadelphia, Maryland, North Jersey, and New York showed up.

Weiland attributed the far reach of K-Smash to her quick entrance into the Smash scene. She shares that “when I got into the smash scene, I didn’t enter slowly” and that in her first tournament she met “one of [her] coolest friends, Phil Visu(EE), he really introduced me to a lot of players and made me feel comfortable in the community.” After spending a couple of months in the Smash scene Weiland said she made “connections all over the country with top players and TO’s. [It] was also through EE and Xanadu that I was able to meet my boyfriend, Matt Lipshultz (Jewchainz), who helps me with everything I do.”

At the tournament, I saw that there were many hands at work during the tournament. Weiland breaks down the people who helped make K-Smash 2.0 happen: ” John McGuire [Son2] helped with seeding melee. Tim Davis[UltimaScout], Boiko, and I did PM. Cliff Phillips and Juan Duarte did the stream, and Billy Applebaum, Mike Polisi, Patrick Carpenter, and I ran the brackets, with extra help from Matt Lipshultz, Dan Wright [Zodiac], and .com.

The event did run into problems. The stream had to be shut down due to technical difficulties just as the Melee bracket was reaching the top four. And unfortunately, the event had to end prematurely because it was going over its allotted time and the remaining matches could not be played out. Cactuar and Dizzkidboogie had to split 1st/2nd place winnings. Dizzkidboogie reset the bracket 3-2 in the first set of Grand Finals.

Overall, the tournament was great, even with its hiccups. It got chaotic during pool matches since the Melee and PM set-ups were scattered around. But once that passed, there was a surplus of set-ups for tournament matches and friendlies. The rival crew battle between Kingsway Regional High School and Woodstown High School drew a crowd, with trash-talk from players and spectators.

With now two great turnouts, I asked Weiland about the future of K-Smash and she revealed that they want to move away for good with their school association.

“Billy, Mike, and I would like to leave K-Smash in the dust. We do not want to have any affiliation with our school.[…]Matt will be joining us, hopefully along with other members. I just think it’s time that we take this seriously as we are already holding some of, if not, the biggest events South Jersey has ever seen. As for a new name, we do not know as of yet.”

The Final Results

Kingsway Regional defeated Woodstown High School

Melee:

1st/2nd: Cactuar (Fox), Dizzkidboogie (Ice Climbers)

3rd: DP (Falco)

4th: C!Z (Marth)

5th: Son2 (Falco), Catnip (Falco)

7th: Widl (Peach), Bones (Falco)

9th:Velocity (Dr.Mario), Zodiac (Captain Falcon), Ten (Marth), Boiko

Project M:

1st: DP

2nd: DVD

3rd: Catnip

4th: Jet

5th: Boiko, JewChainz

7th: .com, Cactuar

9th: Fedrias, Str8wu, Switch, TC

And here’s a gallery of the best pictures I took at the event, enjoy!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.