For me and many others in the Syracuse Smash Community, my introduction to the competitive Syracuse smash community started with finding locals on Smashboards. Major credit needs to be given to Erik “the manalord” Garb for his dedication to the community. On top of being a beast Falco player who has regularly bodied all of the Syracuse smash players over the course of his career , outside of tournaments he is a great mentor to all of the smashers in 'Cuse, for me and so many more. His contributions meant a lot, because I would get on Smashboards posting on the boards just to find people close enough to play, because as we all know upstate doesn’t have the best concentration of Melee players, but that didn’t hold us back. I got in contact with Erik and made it to some Melee sessions that Mana was gracious enough to hold for anyone willing to show up. I met some amazing people playing Melee at Mana’s place, people who became some of my closest friends.
We were all extremely competitive with each other, we weren’t playing at these sessions just for fun it was training, and this was all the high-level practice I could get at the time being a broke college student who didn’t travel much for smash, but once we all became familiar with each other we would play more often even outside of the Melee practice at Mana’s house. We all felt like we were steadily improving while becoming better friends at the same time. Our competitive nature was still burning, though, and we were always looking for more and better people to play with. I was able to find a group of people at Onondaga Community College, which was where I went at the time. There were other Smash Bros. players that played Brawl that said they would be interested in playing Melee if I brought a setup to the college. I started to play and train with them, and eventually we would hold some tournament events and invite our friends and classmates to participate. The events didn’t all have monetary prizes but we were playing for pride anyways. We were always trying to see who the best in the school was or with a certain character. Outside of the school, Mana worked with Cloud City Comics at the local Shoppingtown Mall to organize events that were more official with recorded matches and consistent monetary prizes, which was great because it brought more players from outside the city.
At first, the events were once a month so we were all getting the majority of our practice going by going to the Mana melee sessions. This was also the place everyone went to get practice before the tournaments. To the credit of all those involved in keeping the tournament so consistent helping with running, organizing, and getting the word out for the tournament. Due to amazing support for the events, the tournament gained some notoriety in the area and the tournament was able to get as many as 100 entrants. The tournament now known as CuseTown BeatDown was blowing up, Mana informed us that there were now going to be biweekly events. This was a huge step, having tournaments so often, would definitely lead a level up in player skill in the area by attracting more competitive players trying to get as much tournament experience as possible. The biweekly events were and still are great for the community and it seems like we keeping making strides forward.
Finding a venue downtown made the tournaments much more convenient for all of the competitors. Recently at the biweekly venue, the Vault, the Sucker Punch event was not only featuring Smash bros. Melee and Smash 4 but also Street Fighter V. The Syracuse Smash community is showing a lot of promise and with events like Super Smashed at the Clinton Street Pub coming from Che$$ I hope to see more exponential growth leveling up of the Syracuse Smash Community and other Upstate, NY regions.
