For the first time in Carlmont history, ASB organized a Wii Boxing tournament, complete with a makeshift ring for anyone who wanted to participate.
The tournament lasted from April 29 to May 3 during lunch in room A8. Over 48 participants came to try their skills against others in a virtual boxing match.
Wii Boxing is a specific sport available in the Nintendo Wii console game, Wii Sports. From the fast action packed sport of boxing to the more slow-paced golf, Wii Sports offers a variety of different activities for people to choose from.
Jono Sison, freshman class president, and Nate Hsich, freshman class vice president, spearheaded the creation of the Wii Boxing tournament. Sison and Hsich made it their goal to put on a Wii Boxing tournament after being inspired by their own fun experience playing Wii Sports during the summer.
“We wanted to have a Wii Boxing tournament to share all the fun that we had together with the entire school,” Sison said.
While organizing such an event is a challenge, Sison and Hsich are quite experienced. As the leaders of the freshman class, Sison and Hsich work together to put on other events such as movie nights and food sales.
However, Sison and Hsich faced a new challenge in the creation of Carlmont’s first Wii Boxing tournament.
“This is the first event where we’ve held a tournament or activity because movie nights are separate from that, so this is the first time we’ve done this,” Sison said.
Though Sison and Hsich are new to organizing a tournament, Carlmont is not. Throughout the year, different clubs, as well as ASB, have organized similar tournaments for other video games. These include games such as NBA2K, FIFA, and Super Smash Bros.
According to Sison, what makes the Wii Boxing tournament unique is its connection and familiarity with young students.
We saw the tournament and we thought, ‘Wii Boxing is pretty fun, so let’s just join, because, why not?’
— Brian Shao
“A lot of people know what Wii Sports is and a lot of people grew up with it,” Sison said.
Many young students, like Sison, grew up owning or playing a Nintendo Wii console. The Wii, which was released at the end of 2006, was a revolutionary console. According to Forbes, Nintendo’s creation of a controller that allowed the player to “physically interact with a virtual world significantly changed the experience of video gaming.”
According to Statista, “the Wii is Nintendo’s best selling console. Overall, Nintendo sold about 100 million units worldwide since 2007.”
The most popular top-selling Nintendo Wii titles include Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports Resort, and Wii Sports. According to Nintendo, Wii Sports sits at around 83 million copies sold as of March 31, 2019.
Originally, the Wii Boxing tournament had 48 people signed up to participate in it, but numbers seemed to vary from day today.
“Not only are the people that signed up are showing up, but there’s also a lot of people who are just dropping in to play, and we’re totally fine with that,” Sison said.
One of those people was Brian Shao, a senior and drop-in participant of the tournament.
“We saw the tournament and we thought, ‘Wii Boxing is pretty fun, so let’s just join because, why not?'” Shao said.
