On that fateful Thursday, all my plants were world domination had to be put to the side once again. I had a game to win. The world could wait.

Throughout the week, I had an email chain back and forth with the manager of Manhattan team. The community college there had trouble getting their people to events. Even in nearby Bergen County.

It was easy for us to drive around. Everyone had a car or knew somebody with a car. The college itself was a commuter college. There were no dorms. Everyone lived at home or at their own place.

Manhattan? They all had to go around on foot so that made being there in person. I doubted they even had a good court.

So, them traveling? Not that great of an idea.

To combat that we decided to play this one remote. It was not strictly speaking a league game and again it would only count in case there was a tiebreaker later. With us being up one since we played against the Rockland County guys, this was just another way for us to test our strength before diving into the real battle.

We all agreed to the rules and that this would be a friendly kind of match.

I wanted to see how we were shaping up. We could be up against virtually any team soon and Hudson and Essex County were going to be some of the bigger contenders.

I had seen the highlights of the Essex County match which was put up by a fan. They were looking to be our biggest competitors. There was frustratingly little about it though. I had to follow some of the students there's accounts after finding them being posted and then follow them on Twitch. Nobody was giving a play-by-play at our level. I had to go off my skills from the patch and my best judgment.

This meant that I knew that there were two good kids on the Manhattan team. I also knew that they were the jungler and the bottom laner. This wasn't going to help with my Raquel problem. As much as I liked the girl, she needed to work on controlling her anger. I was also a bit worried about Ester being stuck as our mid laner.

We had run a bunch of drills trying to get her to be provoked and each time, she kind of got the idea. But this was against our B Team.

When 6 PM rolled out, all the kids gathered in our little club classroom. I had asked the school to let me borrow one of the tech rooms for this and seeing as how it was not going to be in a position? They didn't have a problem with it. They wanted to put us in the gymnasium, but I told him I wanted to be closer the switch.

I would take any advantage based off being closer to the router. I knew those kids in Manhattan had that SUNY down state fiber optic cable. All that I needed to know was if the minute changes in that would let me be able to see their stats.

Since things worked out and we had an announcer on our side and an announcer on their side for the small gathering of friends to watch, the game began in earnest.

This time, our ban phase was over a lot faster. Since this was a thing we practiced twice, we knew what we were looking to ban, and we knew what specifically we were trying to avoid the enemy getting. We got a good lift when they picked one of our pre-selected will ban characters.

When an enemy makes a mistake, you don't correct him. You just let him keep going on and do the best you can to not make him realize that he's walking to your trap.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was unable to buy turn two and three. I might be able to buy turn two after the end of this match.

I set the strategy for turn one to be farm. Long-Term? I didn't need them to do anything crazy. My jungler already knew what I wanted him from him. Esther stood ready to back up anybody and she had taken the Middle Lane. She was playing a strong caster who had skill shots. Honestly, he was one of the ones that I didn't expect anyone to ever play. She made him shine.

For the first 6 or so minutes, all was good, and my guys were getting as much gold as they could. I could see a small advantage.

That was when the first pulls began. The enemies jungler started to see if he could stun our guys. Of course they went for Raquel. Raquel was paying her standard bottom lane using a character with an ice shot.

Stella the archer used long range shots to keep the enemy away. Most of her skills revolved around getting longer range and hitting in a line. Each Avatar has four skills. Her ultimate skill sent a ice arrow across the entire map in a single direction. It would be deadly if she could nail somebody from across the map, but it was only something that happened as a fluke.

I could respect her choice as Murph was backing her up this time.

I checked the shop. With three points per minute, I could get turn two after three of these games.

Shop

Basic Profile 2: 1000 points

Turn Two: 200 points

Turn Three: 500 points

Of course, I knew what turn two would do. It would let me set my strategy for turn one without me having to actively move the guys around. Setting farming is a strategy let me look at the overall picture and change the individual tactics as needed. It was giving me a good idea of how to progress.

I needed Raquel to farm as much as possible before the two excellent players on the other side pushed her out of her zone of comfort. I gave her a look. As it turned out, she was beaming.

Maybe she was just really into the game of that exact moment because I had never seen her so happy. Murph was happy as well and then I heard the notification.

"First blood."

I checked the screen to see who it was, and my jaw dropped. In my mind. I looked at the overlay of the map and I saw that my middle lane was gone. I could not believe it. But apparently while I was paying attention to the bottom lane, the support and jungle went to the mid lane and locked down Esther.

Now I never seen the eye of the tiger before. I knew that that was a metaphor that people used when they wanted to pretend to do a montage of training. But at that exact moment, Esther looked like she would easily destroy anybody who stood in her way.

Somebody had messed up her kill streak. Somebody had messed up her ratio.

Esther looked like she was on a mission. I started to think that maybe she was the one that needed some anchor management classes.

I slid over to her to see if anything I could say would keep her from committing murder in that gym.

"Come back strong," I said.

"I got this," she snapped.

I let out a slow exhale. She didn't need my attention right now. These guys would capitalize on her loss and then get her to make another mistake. Instead, I went over to talk to my jungler.

"Can you spend some more time in the middle lane? Harass their guys a little bit more?"

"I got this."

I thought about putting the strategy as defense. That might not work out so well. But it was worth a shot.

Too many games where it was a stalemate forever and then the game just dragged on. What they wanted us to do was go on defensive. That wasn't happening.

Fuck it, I slid the strategy to offense.

“Let’s do what they don’t expect,” I said to the team. “Full court press.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Mentally it felt like they were accepting the change. In game, I could see them moving into position. This was going to be interesting.

Esther was on fire. In my overlay, I could see her avatar steaming over, flames shooting out of her. Of course, the patch would make this look all dramatic for no reason.

I shifted over to Esther.

Her avatar couldn’t power up and she was limited by the technology of her time, but she made her lane sing. If you’ve ever seen someone exactly in her element, this was it. By the beginning of the second turn, her lane had taken down the third tower. There were three towers outside of each base.

Her being at the third one was probably a bit of an overreach. I checked on Racquel and Murph, not wanting to peel my eyes away as Esther killed one, then a second enemy avatar just by grouping her minions correctly putting them in a pincer.

The moment Esther got her third kill, it felt electric. I was internally screaming. She was two away from a kill streak.

She took that time to head back to base and respec.

I could respect that choice. She came back faster and more importantly, with hella life steal. Lactose ability to get a percentage back of the damage deal against an enemy as health. As you can imagine this is better for characters that need to support themselves for a long time on their own.

If you deal a thousand damage and get 5% of that back as health as you are doing great. And this is for minion damage as well as damage against avatars which meant that you could get a lot just by sticking around and fighting more. It almost made you do survivable as you could stay in Lane long enough to buy the next thing.

Usually, you must step out of lane for a while when your health was low but with a life steal build. You We're incentivized to keep fighting minions. Both because it gave health, but also because it gave gold.

Then one could use that gold to get more life steal, continuing the circle of life.

I was about to break in a song about the circle of life when I saw Murph go down. Five seconds later, Raquel went down. This obviously wasn't ideal for my designs on winning as we were getting closer to an even kill count on both sides. We had the advantage on gold but then two of my guys were going to be down for about 30 seconds leaving their Lane open to be farmed. What you're supposed to do while farming was to harass the other guys so they would miss their farming opportunities to last at our minions.

If there was no one there to harass a player, then it was easier to get gold with impunity. It was like playing without an opponent. We have us who wanted to minimize that as much as possible. But if both were dead? They would buy stuff at the shop.

They had the gold for it. And this was their opportunity to splurge.

They did it. I could see their builds were almost to the end. In DOTA you're probably building towards something most of the game. Then at the end? You're in it. The once slow avatar from the beginning of the game was now fast.

The speed of the minions increased as well. Everything was turned up to ten by the end of the game, but we just couldn't get through their defense. They weren't doing team fights.

They were doing the boring old...push one lane strategy.

This works if you're massing your team and you're unopposed. When one the opposite side knows that you're coming down, they will rearrange themselves. If they’re paying attention, that is.

This is the story of how we lost our first match that night. After the match we went to talk out our strategy for a few minutes while everyone got some food or used the bathroom.

"I'm starting to think that we need to back Ester up a bit more, guys."

The team looked at me. In that moment we were all together, all different. We didn't have cool team shirts or swag to wear and none of us matched. Esther has a black and pink think that she rocked. Murph was wearing shorts. Racquel was wearing short shorts. The rest were much the same.

I was in a hoodie. The length of my shorts was classified. Did I go to my office after classes were done to put on my Trinidadian shorts? Yes. But this isn’t about me.

"I wanted to be comfortable. But now we need to talk. You guys are all doing great but you're not talking. You need to be calling out when people are missing in your lanes. You need to be calling out when that itch happens."

I paused. This wasn't a locker room, and I wasn't a rousing public speaker.

"You know that feeling. That one where they've been gone for too long out of lane, and you don't know where they are? Voice that feeling. Focus on your instincts," I said.

"Use the force," Murph said.

"I mean if you have the force, use that. But we can think about their tactics and counter those. Then we can win this. Also, guys they're not physically here," I said. "We can be louder."

That broke the tension a bit. We were all here to play a game and whatever else happened? We could make some noise and have some fun.

"Heck yes Professor Thomas!" Murph said.

"We're coming back. Round two, baby," Racquel said, getting up.

"Round two," Esther whispered. "Fight."

My girls were dialed in. Murph was fading though. I stepped behind him.

"Did you get enough sleep?" I said.

Racquel would be able to make up for him in a lot of cases.

I realized that he had some bags under his eyes.

"I... I did," he said.

"Alright. My door is always open," I said. "Don't let whatever it is get ahead of your schoolwork."

His eyes lighted upon Racquel briefly. He might be worried about her. I wouldn't be able to tell. She seemed... Fine. She wasn't making the mistakes that she had when the bottom lanes had pulled her in.

But now she was getting to be a bit too defensive. It was like she was wandering out of position.

I mentally checked my overlay and made sure that farming was the active strategy this round. But she was moving around like I had tapped defense.

That was new. Alright so they system wanted me to buy round two, did it? I checked my points and I had 210.

I clicked purchase and I felt the points leave me.

Oh well. I selected offense as the strategy, and she fell into line. It was like I could tell her what I wanted her to do but she followed the strategy.

What if she has a wicked case of ADHD? I wondered how the patch would take care of that.

There she was, moving in and crushing groups of minions.

Minions spawn in a line. Ten or so minions leave one base and then match to their deaths, cheerily. They stop moving when they get into conflict with a player, a tower, or other minions on the opposite side. Depending on what's there, they'll prioritize one thing over the other.

One of the enemies decided they wanted to take that time to emote. There was a key you could press to have your avatar dance. Usually this was in the middle of a non-combat situation to get some jokes between yourself and the rest of people on your team.

However, I embraced stupidity. I love the good joke. Even more I loved capitalizing on stupidity through the lens of a good joke. That was about the time that the counterattack happened.

My guys pushed as a unit. The emoting player was the first to fall.

Racquel, Murph and Esther ganked them, giving Racquel the kill and giving the two of them an assist. I could see Esther smile. She was beginning to believe.

I had seen too many games get stuck because the team was too timid. There was a time for conservative play and there was a time for the full court press.

Offense was my full court press.

It began with them going for dragon. But they weren’t really going for the dragon, just trying to bait Manhattan into attacking them.

The began to attack dragon as a group. Esther started calling it out.

“As soon as they show up, pull back and engage,” she said.

I got chills.

Sure enough, one of the opponents, the top laner playing Nico joined the fight.

“Get him!” Racquel squealed.

The Nico player was down to half health before the second guy came in and then it was a game of bumblebees moving back and forth.

There’s this little thing that people can drop around the board to give them more visibility. Little beacons you can place around the board will tell you if the enemy is moving around through specific areas. Normally these little beacons are invisible, but some characters can see invisible eyes.

The Bulldogs going for dragon would have pinged one of their beacons. Them destroying it was a matter of course. Once it was destroyed, the opposing team would have to weigh returning a beacon. It took five seconds, but that was five seconds when they were out of lane. Each beacon lasted about two minutes, so teams were constantly dropping them.

The first war was information. If we knew more than them about their movements, then we were winning. Esther had put a beacon in the right spot between the dragon and the mid lane that the team caught the movement of the back of the team, called it and Racquel nailed a response.

Esther was able to accurately ping a spot for Racquel to use her ultimate skill. She sent the ice arrow on a direct course, slowing the fourth guy to arrive. That made them go into full retreat mode. The thing about fighting was that you had to actually do it. If you’re just running away from a team fight, then you’re letting someone else control it.

It was like controlling the narrative. We were controlling the narrative.

The underdogs went after the invaders, fighting back from the standstill and being one game down. Empowered by their first two kills, the team moves in on the last three players standing. The Bulldogs got the third kill!

I was screaming!

Then Esther ganked the fourth one and the fifth was in full retreat mode and panic.

It just so happened that at that exact moment, the minions were hitting up the walls of their base. Down the mid lane they chased lucky number five. But then he ran into the minions and was forced to decide- I watched the avatar waffled between continuing or making a turn.

It was too long and Murph pulled him back, using his skill shot ability to pull and stun the avatar.

“Get him!” I said, standing over the support. “Go Murph!”

As expected, number five didn’t last long. Then we had it in the bag. They quickly destroyed the towers and then the inhibitors, then it was over.

It was a wild unexpected rush. I felt like I’d just won at life for a moment and then I had to bring myself down. Esther was up, high fiving the team.

I had to take a beat to slow down and drink some water.

“That was a rush,” Racquel said in between sips.

“You’ve got this. Esther, you’re dominating,” I said.

“Yeah, keep it up!” Murph said, standing up and stretching.

Esther blushed.

“Thanks for believing in me, guys,” she said. “But you’re doing great too!”

It wasn’t even a question. She was adorable as all heck. If you had asked me in that moment how I felt about the team? I would have told you how much fun it was to play, about the stories of the fights through the lanes.

But this moment was what it was all for.

This was the feeling I was looking for. Getting my awesome students to work together as a team? Overcoming the odds and beating them in game two?

I sniffed. I was not going to get emotional over this. I mean I was, but I wasn’t going to overshadow them coming together as a team.

We were becoming a team and stuff was starting to look up.

For the remainder of the last game, they played together, I was riding that high.

8.

After the thrill of the match, my friday was shaping up to be far more muted.