On the 23rd April, it took less than half an hour Velazquez to Madden 22 coins take control of the best-of-5 finals and claim the championship. Internet delays and a troublesome younger brother posed more challenges than his adversaries.
Despite his origins as an Lake Stevens Viking, Velazquez was able to dominate the tournament as his team, the Green Bay Packers. The MVP players like quarterback Aaron Rodgers and star wide receiver Davante Adams, together with the team's fast pace that made the playing style flawless, Velazquez said.
It wasn't an actual Super Bowl, but tens of thousands of viewers saw the performance live on television, and a recording of the game has garnered more than 340,000 viewers on the streaming site Twitch. Officials from Washington's high school sports association believe that Velazquez is the first state's national champion in esports. While the pandemic kept kids separate, video games played at Lake Stevens High School experienced an upswing.
"People were already only interacting with each other digitally, and it was an incredibly natural extension of that," said Trevor Wood, an 11th-grade English teacher and advisor to the school's video game club. "The school and the district were really interested in the success of the video gaming club, because it was one of the few ways that kids could interact with each other socially."
The recent popularity of the game "Among Us," an online-based multiplayer game, attracted Velazquez and a host of others to the club. Prior to COVID-19 Wood told me that the club for video games had fewer than 10 members. About 60 students have joined the group's discussion channel. This year, the team also dove into the competitive side of gaming and took on high school students who hail from Washington and across the country with buy mut coins madden 22 a range of games.