Welp hey guys. I don't know if you guys care enough to read this post but if you have a second I'd appreciate it if you could. :)
So for those of you that don't really know me, I'm a 16 year high school student who has aspirations to go into the medical field. It's probably an issue that I have spent more effort on this BLT than most of the other things I do in life, such as school and stuff. Regardless, I wanted to talk about my BLT experience. Basically I joined this site when I was in 7th grade. Actually, I join 4 years and a week ago. I was never even close to good. I had only played the DS games and I thought that torterra was a broken mon. So when I came to this site and saw that moves like toxic were absolutely insane in some cases, I laughed my ass of thinking about how crappy the people were. Those 4 years have been a really weird experience for me cuz there were times were I wanted to quit mons cuz I was so bad... and in the end I did. I came back to the website about 4 months ago and have not regretted it since. I have made some great friends on this website. swb will be my greatest friend on this site forever without a doubt. Now, onto the important stuff :p
This BLT has been my first BLT forever. My first time trying for BLT was actually BLT II. I failed miserably. I played in every single tournament I could and only managed to gather a large sum of 7 points that cycle. Every single time I got to the semi finals in a tour, I went and cried to swb about how happy I was. After I missed BLT by so much, I quit the site and decided to focus on other stuff cuz it wasn't like I was any good. However, near the end of my junior year in high school, I got really bored cuz all my finals finished and then my friends were busy so I had nothing to really do. So I decided to hop back on the site and check how it was. To my surprise, it hadn't changed one bit. The first thing I did was message swb. And after he remembered who I was, I decided to keep playing. He told me that BLT would be starting soon, so I decided to give it one more shot. Things were really tough at first, I didn't know what the heck a z crystal was and ended up putting an icium z on my zapdos and tried to oh ko a mence with HP ice.... and of course I lost that battle. Regardless, I kept on trying to learn the meta and eventually did. In cycle 3 of this BLT, I couldn't believe it but i ended up with 100+ points and qualified for BLT. I was so happy to be a part of BLT that I stayed up and pulled an all nighter to try to learn something that could be useful for the team that drafted me.
Fast forward to the draft. I was with my family out of town and had the worst cell reception. But, I really wanted to watch the draft and see how much I went for. We were walking and sight seeing, but I pulled out my phone, and used up all of my phones battery for the day to find out how much I went for. 35 players or so in, swb messaged me and asked me how I felt about playing OU or DOU. Since I'm a main RU, UU, and a bit of ubers main, I said that I'm the worst OU and DOU player in the world, which I still hold to be true :p. i kept on waiting and as the 42nd pick or something like that, I was nominated by swb. And of course, I went for 3k. I felt kinda discouraged, but I thought, it's ok.. I'l prove them wrong in the actual battles.
When the matchups came out, I started prepping immediately. We were in the car ride back home and i set up a hotspot on my laptop and then used up all my data for the month trying to figure out teams and other things I can use to beat Mysterious M. It was shortly after this that I read Natalies post about how she thought that the Hariyamas were the number one overall team in her opinion. I was really excited. I read all of her viability rankings and they said that I was the black sheep of the team. Then I read Jarii's VR about each player cuz i forgot to read that. I started scrolling through and I found myself listed under C. These two things were kinda painful to take in cuz of all of the time and prep i spent into making this BLT a reality. But swb told me to shake it off. At that moment, my goal became to prove Nat and Jarii.
Week 1: I was playing against an esteemed Ubers player and brought stall like my team told me to. And sadly, I was shat on. I ended up DC'ing cuz of my wifi crashing and couldnt connect back cuz I used up all of the data for the month. Either way, I was really pissed at myself and apologized to the team about 10 times. Then MM disrespected me in the thread and said that the only thing that stopped him from 6-0ing me was the timer. I was really offended that time ;-;. I felt like all the prep work I put in was for nothing cuz of how everyone saw me.
The next two weeks, I worked even harder, and won both of my games. I felt really good because I felt like I was an actual asset to the team.
But this past week impacted me a lot. We were down 0-2 cuz of some unfortunate events. Then swb misplayed a bit a lost... so we were already down 0-3. I had to play Trace, who, from all the replays I watched and all the times I've played against him in actual tours, I knew was good a terrific player. I wanted to win for my team and wanted to win to prove everyone wrong. Yet, when it mattered the most, I choked and lost the game for my team. I felt absolutely disgusting cuz I put my team down to 0-4. In the end, we lost that week and ended our time in BLT IV.
After the loss this afternoon, I really wanted to say a few things to my teammates and then a short message.
GXS, I thank you so much for drafting me... nobody has really trusted me in a match before and you actually nominating me to be drafted with about 20 other solid players left means the world to me.
Serene: You're the man. Even after I was so annoying to you, in the end, you still helped me prep for each match and practiced with me whenever you were online.
MJ: I was glad that you could spend time with me man. I still remember how we fought for the top of the leaderboard in cycle 3 and after I lost (;-;) we became really good friends and made that one really shit ubers team.
TWW: You're an acorn ;p. You were the RU king man... and always will be in my eyes. Not only are you good at RU, but you also have a good heart and helped me with RU even before BLT started. I will always miss those times.
Bundy: Lmao man. Every time I see you, I think of that one picture. But you were a god week one. Nobody can deny that. You were the real 3k legend on this team.
youmu: You're actually a really good player. Don't let anyone undervalue you. Mish Mish said that you were a really good player, and I do too. Keep on playing in cart man... hope you can hit 2000 one day.
Dundies: You're a fricking beast. Idk if you have time to read this cuz ur prolly about to go to the gym rn but you never failed us when we needed you man. Keep on rocking LC like a god.
And last.... swb. I don't know if you will ever realize it... but you're the real reason I'm on this site. When I hit a plateau in like 8th grade, you took time out of your day to help me learn how to predict and what I needed to do to get better. And still, you are my best friend on this site. When I made that bet with you and won, I was so happy that I could talk to you whenever I felt like it. You're the nicest person I know and I will come visit you in Lebanon one day.
Thank you so much guys... each and every single one of you made this BLT one of the coolest pokemon learning experiences ever.
Sorry if this post is long as heck but I wanted to say what I learned from this BLT. I learned that I am a crappy player. Not because I am bad. But because there are so many other people that are better than me. However, do not take me lightly. I will get better. And I will beat all of them.
And as always.. go Hariyamas!