Match Game: A Fake Dating Hockey Romance
1. Lydia
At first sniff, the room reeks of cologne, making my nostrils burn.
I get it, college boys sweat and they want to mask it. But a lot of conflicting smells have made their way through the cracks in my door and are distracting me from the task at hand.
I should be complaining less. I signed the offer letter to be my alma mater’s first Director of Esports, a role that anyone would assume would have lots of testosterone in the job description.
Hard to believe that ten years ago, I roamed this campus bright-eyed and excited to be independent, even if my parents were less than ten miles away. The vivid memories of being at the club fair, my eager eyes taking in the rows of tables on the lawn, not knowing where to start, happily overwhelmed that there were so many options for extracurriculars; are still ingrained in my mind to this day.
As a new student, I was drawn to the Esports Club immediately. On their table sat a computer monitor showing video game footage from some of their most popular games. One of them was this co-op game called Hero Seek. It was a favorite of mine because you could level up NPCs, or non-playable characters, that would defend your “point” while also finding fun legendary weapons along the way. A bit of hide and seek, and a bit of last man standing, but you never fully won until you successfully found what point was captured, and they were secretly hidden on the vast map.
I never called myself a “pro gamer.” I played Hero Seek enough to reach level 100 each season, but there was never a time when I thought I could play in a tournament and do well enough to bring home a prize. The first Hero Seek World Championship was televised on the same channel that later aired a big college football game. I watched from my laptop in my college dorm room as elite teams duked it out for a chance at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to mention all the sponsorship opportunities that would skyrocket their net worth into the millions. But after growing up playing video games with my brother in his bedroom late enough that my parents had to pry the controllers from our hands and practically fight us to go to sleep, you could say I enjoyed gaming.
I remember walking up to the table to see three guys standing behind it, all of whom gave me a quick glance before continuing their conversation, happy to avoid speaking with me. This is a club fair, guys! You’re supposed to sell your club. I peered down at their interest form and noticed it was full of names and emails of different male students, some of whom put their names down and stood around to make conversation with some of the club members. I thought maybe they didn’t need to worry about talking to me due to all of the interest in their club. Maybe they didn’t want a girl to add to that mix, which is why I folded my arms across my chest and cleared my throat to get their attention.
“Um, hi,” one of the members, wearing an “LGU ESports Club” shirt, said. He not-so-subtly rolled his eyes at his fellow members when they nudged him forward to speak to me. “Welcome to LGU ESports Club. Just making sure you’re aware of what table you’re at.”
“Yeah, believe it or not, I can read,” I responded bluntly, gesturing to their tablecloth that had their logo screen printed in big, colorful letters. “I like to play video games.”
He raised a brow. “Alright, cool, what games?”
“Hero Seek.”
His eyes widened. What did he think I was going to say? “No, what is this video game you speak of?” As if I would battle my social anxiety to approach a group of strangers and not overthink every single detail.
“Oh. What’s your favorite character?”
“Esser,” I replied confidently.
He perked up as if starting to slightly come around to a woman being at his club’s meetings. “Huh, cool. Me too.”
I softened up a bit. “Yeah? Do you normally play Support?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I don’t like being Offense. It’s for someone who likes to be in charge, and I want to bolster our defenses while someone else much better at aiming and shooting, can do better at Offense. We have a few good Hero Seek players here. It’s not our most popular game, but the group of people who play, myself included, are a fun bunch.”
“Okay, good to know, thanks.” I felt a little better that it seemed like I could fit in with this group of people that shared my interests, and hopefully weren’t too snooty when it came to skill set.
I talked a little more to this guy, who later introduced himself to me as Blake Potter, VP of Marketing. After putting my name and email down, he let me know their first informational meeting was happening in a week and that he hoped he’d see me there.
That encounter spun into some of the best memories from my undergrad life. I ended up going to that meeting, and the one after that, and so on. In my last year, I was voted as the club’s first female VP of Recruitment, and the club’s gender ratio grew exponentially because I tried to convince other girls and non-binary people I shared classes with to join if they had any interest in playing video games of any kind.
That part of my history probably sealed the deal in being offered the position of Los Gatos University’s first Director of Esports. But, in my reminiscing of the good ol’ days of college esports, I receive the rude awakening that nothing really remains as it was.
My first few weeks had been busy. Before the school year started, I needed to have a recruitment game plan. The Esports Club was a great place to start, but the club had grown tenfold since I was a member in college. And we needed to fill six spots per sport. So, we held auditions to weed out the highly skilled players. I’m lucky that my brother, Landon, is a fourth-year student at LGU, and also involved with the Esports Club. He feeds me intel on who’s good enough to be on the team, and because I can say he’s helping me, it makes those who are on the outside looking in not have as critical of a stare.
Well, almost everyone.
When Jared, one of the coaches we hired, waltzes into the cologne-infested room with a stench of Axe to the millionth power he’s got on himself, his face down and his brows slanted, I’m ready to shrink back and disappear through the wall.
Jared is one of those men I worried about when I was a student: the sexist know-it-alls who do not respect decisions or the people who make those decisions. No matter how good a woman will be at a video game, Jared doesn’t care because he thinks the gaming world is only suitable for men. Men rule them all. And he refuses to acknowledge that I am technically his direct report. Sure, he can make decisions on strategy for gameplay all he wants, but he critiques me for making “dumb business decisions,” and that’s where I get fed up.
“We need to talk.”
Really? No “Hey Lydia, can we talk?” Is it truly a need? There are a lot of wants in the world, less so needs, and us talking doesn’t need to happen. If I could need anything, it’s to get the hell away from here.
“Hello to you too. What do we need to talk about?”
“The monitors you bought are not curved.”
I blink back at him.
“You know,” he says, a little more irritable this time, “the twenty monitors we have in the game room? They’re basic as fuck.”
“Sheesh, watch your language,” I mutter. “I’m sorry? You want us to get new monitors after we just bought these ones about a month ago?”
He groans. “Yes. And they’re not great. You can get a curved monitor with a better resolution for not that much more.”
“But it does cost more. And when you’re talking about twenty monitors, we don’t have that money in our budget to up and buy completely new monitors.”
“Well, these monitors do not make the game look good. And I am bringing it up to Dr. Jones that our gaming performance will be inhibited greatly if we keep using these.”
And add even more work for me if I need to figure out a fundraiser plan, which Dr. Jones will insist on if he agrees that we need to upgrade our monitors to boost our performance.
“Okay.” When he gets Dr. Jones involved, there’s no use fighting it. I’m stuck with having to heed everyone’s demands. “I’ll start thinking of a fundraiser plan.”
“Great. No charity tournaments, please. The team isn’t ready to play in front of an audience yet.”
I wish I had a roll of duct tape that I could just rip a piece off and use it to cover his mouth. I can guarantee that the team didn’t tell him any of that. He’s speaking on their behalf because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed if our team loses on our turf.
“Noted.” At this point, I wish I could shrivel up into a ball and hide in the darkness so people and their unrealistic expectations are out of sight, out of mind. “That it?”
“For now,” he shrugs. “I’m sure there’s some other things that I’m blanking on right now.”
“Well, feel free to send them in an email and I can take a look.” And so I don’t have to listen to your snooty voice berate me for how I’m not doing my job properly.
“Great.” He gets up from the seat across my desk and walks out of my office. As he’s making his way out of the room, I hear him shout Landon’s name as they cross paths, and Landon gives a fake “Heeeey man” that I know he does on purpose to people he can’t stand to tease them into thinking he’s their “bro” or something.
“Jared came to see you?” he asks as approaches. He sets down a paper to-go box on my desk. I give it a puzzled look.
“Pasta,” he says. “You didn’t come down, so I assumed you’d be holed up in your office.”
“Thank you.” I take the box and open it. Landon and I meet weekly to eat lunch together. I’m surprised that my younger brother would rather dedicate a day a week to eat with me, versus his friends, but it also gives us a chance to talk about esports. “Yeah, he did. Some shit about curved monitors.”
“He’s an asshole,” Landon notes. “It makes me upset that he’s actually a good player and knows how to coach decently, or I’d get his ass out of here.”
“Yeah. I wish I could fire him. But Dr. Jones cares more about the team being good than anything else. I’m just here to make sure we’re getting funding and people to notice us.”
“A lot of people are excited,” Landon quips. He’s trying to say that with a hint of airiness in his voice like there shouldn’t be anything I have to worry about. A snap of my fingers, and we’ll get to where my boss, Dr. Jones, the VP of Student Life, can look at everything and nod silently to himself.
“Students,” I counter. It’s awesome that we’ll have no problem getting students to attend the events. But students don’t have as much money as alumni, whom Dr. Jones wants me to find a way to woo into donating money so we can participate in tournaments, buy uniforms, and now, apparently, these curved monitors.
“I need to get the people who have a lot of money excited, too. Because if we’re going to be replacing our monitors with curved ones, that’s going to cost us a whopping...” I type “curved gaming monitor” into the search bar and the first one that comes up is going to run us nearly two hundred dollars. Multiply that by twenty, add tax and shipping, and I’m starting to feel beads of sweat on my forehead. “Five thousand dollars?!”
“Yeah, esports isn’t cheap, unfortunately.”
“No, it isn’t.” And I have only a finite amount of time to fundraise for a sport that people don’t even believe is one. I have to do what I can to prove that esports is worth fighting for, and if I don’t, I’ll be kissing this dream job goodbye.