Gen Xers and millennials used to dream of days like this as kids at the video arcades, driving thumbs into those buttons as quickly as possible to accrue as many points as could possibly be amassed within a time limit. 

And now, high school students have such an opportunity to excel in a sanctioned sport, an edge the Kearns Cougars used this past April to win their first state title in “Super Smash Bros Ultimate,” a video game featuring many of the same characters you grew up playing with.

‘“[Super Smash Brothers]’ is a fighting game, and it has a big roster of characters,” said head coach Nicholas Angell. “Thanks to the efforts of our student leaders, we've been able to recruit a complete set of three teams. This has enabled us to increase the variety of characters we play against and the characters that my students have knowledge about.”

These characters include Nintendo mainstays such as Mario, Pikachu and Link along with special guests like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Sonic The Hedgehog and Joker, among other notables. The screens on which the characters play are similar to what you might have played on the “Super Mario Bros” games—though it is kind of a hybrid of “Super Mario” meets “Mortal Kombat,” in a way.

The road to winning a state title though, is often wrought with a few bumps along the way. According to Angell, that was not any different for his team.

“Last year, we had a harder season because some of the matchups were with characters we hadn't seen as often or weren't quite familiar with,” Angell said. “This year, we took two approaches to improving: we started to review stats on the league website we use, PlayVS, that help us understand not only who the other teams play but also plan a pregame strategy.” 

That tactical plan worked, as Kearns went 7-1 during the regular season, losing only to Box Elder in Week 2. The Cougars outscored their opponents 44-19 and tied for second place in the standings.

Kearns’ record was good enough to move them into the playoffs in March where they blanked both Hillcrest JV and Woods Cross 3-0 to ease into the third round. The Cougars had to survive an onslaught from Maple Mountain, but prevailed 3-2 to move on to the semifinals against Springville.

The Cougars upset Springville 3-1 in the semis and had to play the Hillcrest Varsity squad in the finals. In a rugged duel, Kearns took the playoff victory by the score of 3-2.

That playoff title moved Kearns into the 5A state championships at Weber State April 11, in which Kearns again had to endure a ferocious battle with Hillcrest for the second time in three weeks to capture their first-ever 5A crown in esports.

For these Kearns seniors, brothers Sebastian and Jose Espinoza Lopez and Thomas Smith, it had to feel great to put in all that work and come home with so much hardware, along with memories to last a lifetime. In Angell’s eyes, he said he has nothing but the utmost gratitude for his student-athletes.

“I feel really lucky as a coach to work with these students. They've shown up every day to practice and worked hard to both have fun and improve each other. It's been almost the same core group for four years now, and it'll be hard seeing them graduate as seniors.”