Tewksbury Memorial High School esports team REDMN has recently qualified for the Massachusetts MSAA Rocket League state championships, which will be held on Thursday, December, 2nd 2021. For teams competing at the high school level, the 3 v. 3 Rocket League playoff series is a best-of-seven format.
Rocket League is a three-dimensional online soccer game in which the “players” are customized cars that are driven by human players to perform jumps, flips, and other acrobatics in order to score while defending your own goal. Seven students represent TMHS on the team: sophomore Peter Impink, senior Ryan Melo, junior Andy Harllaka, freshman Evan Festa, freshman Toffy Beyloune, senior Matthews Marques, and freshman Sean Carroll.
The top 16 teams from the regular season compete in a playoff bracket, with single elimination rules requiring teams to win four games in a row.
A sub team played the regular season for the TMHS team, advancing the team to the playoffs. During the playoffs, team members will switch off as needed to cover the seven games, as agreed.
Because perennial powerhouse Shrewsbury has also advanced to the championship, the competition is expected to be fierce. During the season, the teamTMHS REDMN has also face David Proudy High School in Spencer, Sutton High School, Dartmouth High School, Nipmuc Regional High School in Upton, Shawsheen Tech Rams from Billerica, Burlington High School, and Montachusett Regional Vocational High School in Fitchburg.
The said team provides competitive and organized esports teams for League of Legends, FIFA, Madden, and Rocket League games as part of high school competition, and is always looking for new members.
The game is played entirely online, with team members communicating via Discord.
The state playoffs will be “broadcast” from the player’s perspective. On Thursday at 3:30 p.m., tune in to the following channels to watch the playoffs.
To watch Ryan Melo’s Twitch channel, go to Twitch.tv/moulo, or Andy Harllaka’s Twitch channel, go to Twitch.tv/nerds2166.
When a group of students advocated for the formation of an esports team at TMHS, it was formed in early 2020. The teacher who had some of the students in his class, Sanford Arbogast, also did some research and discovered that Massachusetts had nearly 40 teams at the time, with some schools having multiple teams in the high school arena.
Because the game’s remote nature prevents in-person contact, the team has remained consistent throughout the pandemic.