"Overwatch," the insanely fun first person hero shooter created by Blizzard Entertainment, has helped me realize my full potential as a team player.
My story starts on a Saturday afternoon. My friends and I have been talking about video games when we see a post on our school’s Facebook page advertising a varsity eSports club. We look more into it, and it turns out that they have a varsity Overwatch team, a game which my friends and I played often. I decide to try out, not thinking I would make the team (there were 56 applicants for 6 spots), but just simply trying to see what real competitive eSports looked like from the inside.
Long story short, the tryouts consisted of many people like me, just trying out for fun with no intention of making the team. Astonishingly, at the end of the tryouts, I was offered a spot on the team. This was an amazing offer, and I quickly accepted. After all, if I was good enough at tryouts, that meant I was a pretty good player, right?
I was wrong.
After meeting up with the team and practicing with them for a couple days, we entered a weekly tournament. We were all extremely excited—none of us knew what to expect, but we all knew we were going to be playing our best, not wanting to disappoint our new teammates.
To put it simply, we were destroyed in the first game. Annihilated. Obliterated. Utterly destroyed. After the game, we were all very quiet. No one really knew what to say, because no one wanted to acknowledge our loss. But suddenly, we all started speaking. We were blaming ourselves, saying what we all did wrong, and how we all really thought we were better. Our coach spoke up, silencing us all.
He spoke very slowly, making sure that all of his words were carefully thought out. He told us that even that our hopes had been dashed, even though we just suffered a humiliating defeat, he was still proud of what we did. He went all around our team, telling us all individually what we did right, a great play we made, and how we helped the team. He was great in calming us down and reminding us that we were still beginners, and that if we had won our very first tournament match it would have been a huge achievement. In the end, we were all extremely proud of each other and ourselves, and we were convinced that the only way we could go way up.
Our coach helped us greatly during that day, and because of that, our team grew closer and more committed to each other than if we had won. What I’m trying to get at here, is that no matter how hard you’ve been hit, you can always get better. There are always people willing to help you shoulder your burdens and make you stronger, and no matter what, remember that you’re there for a reason. Embrace it.
