not really sure how i want to start this post, so i guess I'll just type as I go. this tournament has been a roller coaster of extreme highs and lows for me personally and without a doubt one of the hardest, most stressful and time-consuming of endeavors i put forth in any tournament on this site. easily eclipsing my back to back ost finals as well as stour runs combined. initially i didn't even want to play in wcop after i won ost and wanted to take a break from mons indefinitely, but knowing that we had exceptional talent with z0mog winning stour, me winning ost, and our star duo in lax and lavos dominating spl, i honestly felt that we had the best chances out of any team this year.
while this was certainly an experience that did pay out in our favor, i definitely will say that i will not be putting myself through that shit ever again. barely scraping by every round and having to tiebreak in every one of them except the last (thank jesus) is taxing in and of itself, not to mention having to carry almost our entire sm and having to supply optimal and unique teams(90% of our sm teams were made from scratch) and studying and researching various match ups had its toll on me as a player and that showed as the tour progressed (not to mention how garbage our oras is). having all of these tight rounds and tiebreaks definitely made me question how far we could go as a team and almost made me want to quit due to the stress but we persevered and am confident in saying that we fucking earned this. if there's anything i can look back on fondly in regards to my own performance is that i was able to save us during qualifiers from a 12-14 deficit and the tiebreak that later ensued, so i'm really glad everyone else was able to not only carry their weight later on, but also my sorry ass to the finish line.
even though i have a lot of good and (some bad) things i can say about everyone on our team, i don't really feel the need to do shoutouts since we all met up and i know you're all amazing people, but everyone who cheered us on and anybody who helped our players along the way are people i'm just as thankful towards. i'm not sure when i might come back to competitive mons, and if i actually will, nevertheless us west will always have a special place in my heart since i can always count on you guys whenever i need your help and vice versa. apologies to everyone else i ignored who messaged me during this time frame as i was stressed out beyond belief and did not want to deal with anything else but i am in a better place now. oh yeah also some of my opponents who had to deal with my sporadic scheduling, my team didn't trust me to play so they scheduled for me :/ but i'll stop typing more before i say anything else stupid lol.