TRAINER'S EYE #24 - "The Fitzgerald Family" ft. BuckeyeFitzy

In this Pokemon interview, we're joined by Buckeyefitzy, a Pokemon GO player and PVP enthusiast. We dive into his experience with the game, his love for PVP, and how he and his family use Pokemon GO to better connect as a family.

Buckeyefitzy shares his journey with Pokemon GO, including how he got started with the game and what keeps him interested in playing. We also discuss his love for PVP and what he finds appealing about it, including the thrill of battling, competition, and community.

One of the unique aspects of Buckeyefitzy's Pokemon GO experience is how he and his family use the game to connect and travel together. We talk about their adventures in participating in Play Pokemon tournaments and the importance of family bonding through shared experiences.

Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay

Transcript

David Hernandez: 0:00

My name is David Hernandez and you're listening to As The Pokeball Turns! Welcome to as the Pokemon Ball Turns, where we interview people around the community on how their Pokemon Go journey started, where it has been and where it is currently going. While for some of us the thought of family might have a negative connotation, there are popular families that hold up this ideal of families being a safe place where you can find both love and support with each family having its own quirks. The examples of families are numerous, such as The Brady Bunch, The Addams family, The Simpsons, The Banks from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and countless others. Even when you look into the Pokemon franchise, there is actually a family known as The Winstrate Family that first debuted in the Hoenn region. The Winstrate Family has a sign outside their house that reads,"our family's hearts beat as one," showcasing the idea that the family unit is not only alive, but also united. In fact, The Winstrate Family is a family who is obsessed with both Pokemon battles and battling. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Well, it will be with my next guest. My guest today shares not only his story into Pokemon Go, but also shares how his family has come together through Pokemon Go and PVP to continue to live long and prosper. He is a member of the B.T.W Faction, from Cincinnati, Ohio, here is his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go. This is BuckeyeFitzy. Today I'm joined by the runner up of the Salt Lake City Regionals, BuckeyeFitzy. Now, I imagine based on your name that you're probably a huge fan of Ohio State. Is that true?

BuckeyeFitzy: 2:15

Indeed. I grew up for most of my childhood in the state of Ohio and went to school there for not one, but two degrees. So I am a Buckeye through and through.

David Hernandez: 2:26

So how far does this fandom go? Like, do you have like Ohio blankets? Do you have like a wall painted with Ohio State? Like how far does this go fandom wise?

BuckeyeFitzy: 2:33

Yeah, I mean, it, it goes pretty far. I don't know that I have a man cave or anything filled with Ohio State memorabilia, but if I had one I could probably fill it with all the stuff I've collected, both going to school there twice and then, just collecting it over the years, so it is all over the place, but my better half is an Ohio University grad, so we can't go completely Buckeye in the household.

David Hernandez: 2:53

That's fair enough. That's how you do compromises, I believe is what they call that one.

BuckeyeFitzy: 2:56

Yep.

David Hernandez: 2:57

Unfortunately, we're not here to talk about college sports today, we are here to talk about Pokemon Go. So I gotta ask like, how did your journey in Pokemon Go started.

BuckeyeFitzy: 3:03

I actually had to go remind myself of what the start date was, since we can see it on our, profile page. And I did recall that the better half I'm referring to MamaFitzy, was, the one that started in the game the week that it came out. And I was basically a little too hip for it, I was never into the Pokemon franchise, in any sense, didn't really play the video games or anything despite being a big Nintendo, fan. So she wanted to get our girls involved, which at the time our girls would've been eight and five, and two. So the eight and the five year old, they obviously didn't have phones, but they had their devices that could run the game. So she made a couple of accounts and started playing, actually got her mother involved, so the, the kid's grandmother as well. And after about a week, they were really excited about it, really enjoying it, and so I ended up making an account as well. The first couple of days, I made the account under the Pokemon Trainer Club for Khaleesi, my oldest daughter. And the intent was,"okay, well she doesn't yet have her own account. I'm gonna pass this off to her." But then within two days of catching and exploring, I was hooked and so I made my own accounts and the rest is history. So I'm a couple weeks behind everybody else that started on day one. But it did not take very long because the excitement was running through the, the entire Fitzgerald household.

David Hernandez: 4:21

It sounds like Pokemon GO is a family of affair based on what you told me. So do y'all like go outside together and go play, like how far does it go just family-wise?

BuckeyeFitzy: 4:29

Yeah, definitely. I will say over the years it has come and gone a little bit depending on, how many of the girls are really into it at the moment. As the game has grown and expanded into different realms from raids to PVP and so on, the girls have picked up on some of that and sometimes they'll be into one aspect of the game more so than another. That being said, things like Community Days, we are still often going out, even if it's just driving around in the rain. We'll go out or walk around one of the local parks here in the Cincinnati area and we'll have a good time with it. We're very often it's all five of us playing together.

David Hernandez: 5:03

Oh, that's so sweet like, I always love seeing families play together in the park. Just something about just seeing, it's like a new family game night. You know, you think about back in the eighties people would play game nights a little bit together and I feel like Pokemon Go has kind of brought that for other people, but just in the digital form.

BuckeyeFitzy: 5:18

It's very analogous, we are a huge tabletop gaming family as well. I was raised kind of doing that in my family and have passed that tradition down. And it is very much like that just in digital form and honestly, I was admittedly a bit annoyed even when I got hooked on the game a little bit initially. I felt, eh, I don't know, you know, we're all staring at our phones outside, but it could be a lot worse. You could be doing a lot worse things on your phone. So it's just become second nature basically.

David Hernandez: 5:45

Now you said that you actually grew up playing Nintendo a lot, but Pokemon didn't catch your interest. Did you just like, grow up past the age of Pokemon being appealing or was it just something specific about Pokemon at the time that didn't appeal to you?

BuckeyeFitzy: 5:56

No, it was very much in the wheelhouse of when I grew up. I'm a nineties child and for whatever reason, it didn't capture my imagination quite like Zelda and Mario and other core Nintendo properties did. I mean, of the Nintendo properties, I'm definitely first and foremost a Zelda person. So I'm traversing Link through whatever adventures they're going to throw him in this this cycle. I've saved Hyrule on way too many occasions.

David Hernandez: 6:24

Saved Princess Zelda like how many times?

BuckeyeFitzy: 6:27

Yeah, probably 50 to 70

David Hernandez: 6:30

And 50 to 70 more

BuckeyeFitzy: 6:32

Yeah.

David Hernandez: 6:34

Well, very cool. So you said, so y'all would drive around a lot. Is that primarily how y'all played before PVP?

BuckeyeFitzy: 6:40

I think the first big change after the game had been out a year was raids and I do small amount of travels for work and so sometimes the family will come along and just, you know, explore while I'm working wherever it is and it was typically Washington, DC. It's a great town for them to go to museums and explore, but then in our free time, we'd go around and also explore whatever Pokemon we could find. And then I just recall on one of those trips, raids dropped for the first time, and I believe it was Articuno that was up first in the raids. So we have some Articuno on all of our accounts saved from exploring raids for the first time.

David Hernandez: 7:13

Are you all on the same team by chance?

BuckeyeFitzy: 7:15

No, actually. and we haven't changed teams, although we've strongly encouraged our middle child to do so. But, uh, of the accounts that we have in the family that are actively played, there's one Instinct, and like I said, that's our middle daughter and then the rest of us our Team Mystic.

David Hernandez: 7:31

You have officially become my favorite family so far like you have no idea how many people I've seen who are valor and instinct, like where are my Mystic people at? So...

BuckeyeFitzy: 7:39

Yeah and I wish I had a Pokemon history so I could, you know, really, stick it to team Valor, but honestly they're just the people that get me my Gym coins, so

David Hernandez: 7:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. since you've become familiar with Pokemon through Pokemon Go, do you have any particular favorite Pokemon at all?

BuckeyeFitzy: 7:54

Well, I did name my car after Umbreon, so I guess that's probably the leading contender,

David Hernandez: 7:59

Really?

BuckeyeFitzy: 7:59

Uh, yes. So I, have a, black vehicle and I actually got a plate that says Umbreon, so if you happen to be driving through Ohio and you see somebody's like, oh, that's a Pokemon car with an Umbreon plush in the front, that's, that's me. Uh, so I have full bought in here, even though I've only been a Pokemon fan for now, six years. We have definitely decided,"Hey, you know, we're gonna go all in with this." The kids are so passionate about it and just like any other pastime or interest of theirs, you know, when you're a parent you wanna dive in and really kind of enjoy it with them. And in this case, it's neat because I've gotten to connect with a lot of people in my age group that are original Pokemon fans and so the community we've been able to build locally and, and of course at some of these regionals, even broader than that, has just been staggering how many people that are my age colleagues or younger. There's just a ton of people at all different walks of life and all different age groups that are into this Pokemon franchise. So that's been really neat to see and, and then join that community basically.

David Hernandez: 8:57

What is it like to play in Ohio?

BuckeyeFitzy: 8:59

It's not bad. We do have four seasons in Ohio, although autumn tends to be far too short. We skip right over summer to winter, too many years often, but it's really not bad. I did kind of joke earlier that sometimes we have to drive around on Community Day because it gets rainy or blustery. I mean, honestly, part of that is just having the, the three children as well and not necessarily wanting to drag them out and get them sick or whatever. But more often than not, I'd say Community Day once a month or a little bit more, we're able to actually go out and, and enjoy the outdoors. As far as the community, and again, I can really only speak to the Cincinnati area community, it was really, of course, quite, busy for those first couple of years. but the core group of people that you see on community days and the like, I mean, you see the same faces if you're playing in the same areas, the same little suburbs or towns. So I would say it's got a pretty strong following still particularly for a game that's six years old.

David Hernandez: 9:53

How harsh does the weather get in winter over there? Like do y'all have to like, sometimes not be able to play or do y'all play while driving in the snow?

BuckeyeFitzy: 10:00

Yeah, so we don't get a ton of snow down in Cincinnati. It's not quite the same as it is up in Cleveland, where they get a lot of lake effect snow. For us, you know, we probably will only get one or two significant snows a year and more often than not, those don't happen until February. Granted, that's still a time of year when you'd be playing Pokemon, but at most, I think there's only been maybe once or twice where we've had real significant snow over the last five years, because we don't get snow all the time when it does snow, you are busy playing from the house, right? Which during the pandemic, all the bonuses that they made to, make playing from home, a lot easier, made those circumstances not so dire. But, there have been other times where a reasonably good community day and you're kinda stuck in the house just catching what you can.

David Hernandez: 10:42

Now, of course, you're definitely more focused in PVP nowadays, but before P V P, what was your primary objective when it came to Pokemon Go? Was it primarily just family based or did you like collect stuff?

BuckeyeFitzy: 10:52

So for me personally, it was Pokedex filling and collections. That's always been, and still is to this day, a fascination for me is I guess there's some completionist mentality that I have to try to catch'em all or whatever the saying is. So while I still enjoy that, I still enjoy hunting down trades with local people that have traveled afar to get regionals we can't get here in the States. Obviously that part of the game has fallen a little bit to the backside as there's only so many Pokemon released a year now, or, so many, new ones that can come out. Even though that was my primary focus in the beginning, the game has obviously changed for me and for all of us as we've gone along.

David Hernandez: 11:31

Now, I know you've said you traveled around because of your job. Have you had a chance to ever travel for Pokemon Go? Like have you gone to like a tournament or to go fest or stuff like that?

BuckeyeFitzy: 11:39

So we did do Go Fest in Chicago in 2019, which was, uh, obviously one of the the best trips and, uh, I recommend the in-person GoFest to anybody that can make it happen. That was one of the things that we did. We had in-person Silph tournaments once those started up in town. And then primarily we weren't traveling for any particular reason related to Pokemon. But for example, when we went down to Sanibel Island in Florida a few years ago, there were things down there like Heracross at the time to catch. My wife and I took a trip to Hawaii and same deal, right? There's Corsolas there, so we would obviously incorporate whatever we were going somewhere for business or otherwise."Hey, are there regional Pokemon around or somewhere close? And is that something that we can involve ourselves in or go catch?" because again, back then, catching new and different Pokemon was definitely the primary drive for me. And then once we got into battling, obviously there have been some trips with that. One of my business trips to Europe, Silph had started up and so one of my very first Silph tournaments on my card is at the beginning of season two. I played in a tournament in Germany, which was incredible just because I don't speak German. So the language barrier is difficult, but they can speak broken enough English and we all can speak Pokemon, so it was just neat to experience the game and join a community that I really have never seen again and, and wouldn't see before that date.

David Hernandez: 13:02

What was it like to go to a random Silph tournament in a different country? Like you said it was broken English, so how did y'all communicate and. do the PVP tournament?

BuckeyeFitzy: 13:10

So credit to the, the community. I forget the, the particular name of the one there in Munich, but credit to them for, certainly having organizers that were more than welcoming. I think I had messaged them on Discord or the like looking into the tournament because that's where I'd found out that it was happening and then where it was announced. This tournament, it wasn't in an establishment, it wasn't in a building or a place of business, it was actually just in kind of a local park. Thankfully the weather was quite nice. And despite the language barrier, we made it through, I think for three of the four rounds I played, I don't know that I really had much conversation with the opponent. Just knowing that I didn't speak German and they didn't feel very comfortable speaking whatever level of English that they could, but it was a really neat experience. that was, right at the beginning of Silph for us. It was also exciting just because it was new to be battling PVP in a show six play, three format. But to do so kind of out of your comfort zone, it's definitely an experience that I'll never forget.

David Hernandez: 14:06

What was it about PVP that got you hooked in?

BuckeyeFitzy: 14:09

So ironically, we'll go back to GoFest there in 2019. We had only played in a couple of our local Silph tournaments, so our local community and to this day, they're quite good at organizing raids and doing that part of the game. But one or two of my raiding friends had mentioned,"Hey, we're running these tournaments once a month. They happen at what happens to be my favorite brewery in Cincinnati, Rhinegeist. They were just encouraging trying to build their player base and bring more people in and of course they knew, because we have a reputation for being a family of players. They're like,"Hey, you know, the girls can play too" and so we went into it and tried a couple of tournaments. So then turn that around a couple months later, we go to Go Fest and that was, I believe, the first time that they had a battle arena set up at Go Fest. And if you won, you would move on to the next little stage and you'd kind of work your way up the bracket. And so all of us joined not really knowing, again, despite our little bit of self experience, not really knowing what we were doing and I think everybody else in the family, including my mother-in-law, got, knocked out in the first round, but the girls had great fun with it. I had figured out through some research on the road as we drove to Chicago that Medicham, and Azumarill and Venusaur make up quite a good core. So I just played something very basic and played it reasonably well and managed to get up to the finals of my bracket. For whatever reason, that was just such a little exciting experience that was unexpected. Obviously there was a ton about go fest that we loved, but that experience kind of stood out to me and if I'm honest, that's probably what locked me in. As lucky as that break was that I didn't run into some killer battler in the first round or whatever, it just sparked it. And from that point on, I was all in on doing the Silph tournaments. Just a few months later then the pandemic hits and if anything, that kind of solidified it, because Silph was one of the few ways that we could still have an outlet basically during those months.

David Hernandez: 16:02

Did the entire family catch onto the PVP part or is it only like, like few people besides yourself?

BuckeyeFitzy: 16:07

My two oldest daughters basically had their moments with PVP where they are all in and it is their favorite part of the game. Right now, my oldest daughter is still in that mode, and as I'm sure we'll discuss in a little bit, it certainly didn't hurt her interest that she qualified for Worlds last year, the first time that we had a Worlds for Pokemon Go. She is the one that is currently right there in, maybe not quite as many Silph tournaments as me, but certainly is doing multiple Silph tournaments for the formats a month and is engaged in various Discord servers and always battling. Then our middle child actually was the one who really got the spark first, and it was coming off of that GoFest. She really, really enjoyed in-person tournaments. So actually the pandemic is kind of what killed it for her, and she hasn't ever completely come back. She's still quite good at battling and much better than her age would ever let on. She beat a lot of really good battlers in our community and, surprised them quite frankly. And then our youngest child obviously has kind of come in a little bit later than the rest of us and has never really gotten the spark, although here in the last self season, she did join. So all three of my daughters and I would play in our locals Cincinnati tournaments and she certainly has fun with it, but she's not as engaged as the other two have been.

David Hernandez: 17:22

Well, how about we go in and actually talk about it? So how was y'all experience getting to worlds last year?

BuckeyeFitzy: 17:27

Yeah, so it was almost a happy accident, basically, so again, we'll turn the clocks back So we were looking at the calendar, I think the first regional had happened in the States was in Indianapolis and because Cincinnati's not that far away from Indianapolis, a couple of our local players had decided to go up and play in that event. They had an absolutely awesome time, loved everything about it, thought it was just a great experience and so that's what they brought back to us. And then we were able to watch a couple of the regionals as they happened later. I believe the one in Milwaukee stands out because someone that is an age colleague of, my two older daughters, of course, got third at that event. That being BirdPower and so they got to see these events on stream and they got to see our local community be excited about it. And of course, we haven't yet until this upcoming season brought back in-person tournaments, so just being able to go play in person was also an exciting thing for all of us in the family. We actually were pretty conservative through the pandemic and still kind of are. My wife got covid really bad and got hospitalized for about a week. But I asked my wife, do you think it'll be okay if I take up the two older girls to this event? And that event was N A I C, so North American International Championships, which happened to be in Columbus. And she said,"yeah, they have safety protocols." You actually had to show a vaccination proof at the time for those Pokemon events last season. So it's like, okay, let's open up the doors a little bit and go try it. So we did and it turns out that our middle child was not able to play in GO because of the age of consent laws. So unfortunately, anybody who is under the age of 13 can't currently play in competitive GO. I have relatively strong feelings about that, but nonetheless, she played VGC, so we kind of got a crash course in the video game and trying to figure out sword and shield and I don't think we did very well with it, but nonetheless, she at least would have something to play. Khaleesi, who's our oldest and I played in our separate age brackets at N A I C and she ended up getting third. I did quite terribly my first in-person tournament in three years, I didn't even win a single game. I went oh and four across my two matches, and I did play a couple of really good players. So it wasn't that I was losing to bad players, but I had had quite a poor experience of it myself. All that being said, I got to see people that were on my current faction in person for the first time in many months. I got to see people on the faction that I would eventually switch to, right, and build relationships with them. So the weekend in and of itself wasn't a loss at all, even though I had done poorly. And then the, world's invites, I believe went to top four at North American International Championships and the Travel Awards were to the top two. But because HotPoket was in the seniors division last year and had already won the Indianapolis Regional, the travel award actually passed down to Khaleesi. So we get back home and now, again, understanding the context that we're super conservative, haven't taken any trips, haven't done any travel for almost three years. I now bring this back home to my better half, and I ask her, I say,"okay, this is kind of a once in a lifetime experience, right?" I had never qualified for world Championships of anything myself, and I don't think she had either. Our oldest is not really into sports. This is one of the few things she's got a lot of passion for, we should support this and she kind of knocked my socks off and said not just, oh yeah, you know, we should use the travel award to take one of the parents and her to go, which I thought was what we were going to do. But she just flipped it back around on me and said, you know, our whole family should be there to support her, you know?

David Hernandez: 20:57

Oh wow.

BuckeyeFitzy: 20:57

Do this as a family. Let's do it And so

David Hernandez: 21:00

That's awesome!

BuckeyeFitzy: 21:01

All credit in the world goes to her. for being willing to take that risk and get back out there in the world a little bit. So on very short notice, because N A I C was at the end of June, so we're making this decision basically at the beginning of July and everybody but me and the family had expired passports, so we're expediting. The very next week we're at the post office filling out way too many papers and expediting paying, paying way too much money to expedite passports, so that we can all get over to London in the middle of August. I'll just tell you, it was a fantastic experience and we went over there for a week and a half. Again, we tried to do it right. We didn't want Khaleesi to be jet lagged for her matches, so we wanted to go over a few days before and then also just not waste the trip, right? If we're gonna go on that long of an airplane trip, might as well let the kids see London, let them see England someplace that, you know, you never know whether they'll go back. They certainly hadn't been there before, none of them had been to Europe, at all, unlike Kelly and myself. It was a four day event in London, and again, it was just on a much bigger scale than even things like Go Fest. It was just a collection of people from all over the world and all over Europe that were all just really passionate about Pokemon. And it didn't really matter whether they were into VGC or TCG or Unite or GO. Everybody was really into the same intellectual property, the same core underlying game and it was just really neat to see all that passion in all of the different branches and all the different games that were played at Worlds. And then, of course, got to watch Khaleesi play in her senior's division. She unfortunately didn't win either her matches, but she did play against BirdPower in the first round of the losers bracket. And it was one of the closest matches. I mean, I think it's a lot harder or a lot more stressful as a parent to watch your child compete than to do it yourself. And knowing how good BirdPower was, I was just so pleased and happy the match basically came down to one fast move. Then Bird Power lost her next round, so they ended up taking both of them over to the prize wall at Worlds Together and they talked for probably an hour and a half or two hours. It's one of those friendships probably made for life that wouldn't have happened, but for this random, crazy circumstance of, Hey, we saw this regional on the stream, it looks good, let's go try," and then she qualifies for worlds and three months after we're even beginning to think about this endeavor, we're sitting in London right at World Championship It was a crazy whirlwind experience and honestly I just hope for the future of the game that other families, get to experience that same sort of fun whirlwind, right? That Pokemon for us has kind of become now a little bit of a tourism thing where we're traveling a little bit and yes, the primary reason is for these Pokemon events, but it gives us an excuse to go explore the world. Uh, and perhaps, that's what Niantic wanted us to do all along, right? Was get out there and explore. So...

David Hernandez: 23:53

get out and go. Yep,

BuckeyeFitzy: 23:54

yep. If it gives us an excuse to do so, then so be it.

David Hernandez: 23:57

Now, as a father, how did it feel to see your daughter trying to compete for becoming a world champion?

BuckeyeFitzy: 24:02

I mean, it's just incredibly gratifying, right? Certainly as she's grown as a battler, it was just really neat to see her grow in the ways that all competitors do and then, you know, have a chance to show herself or prove herself on the big stage. It's almost hard to put into words just how proud you are as a parent to see your kids succeed and what they're passionate about.

David Hernandez: 24:24

For sure and especially because, you know, not every one of us is athletic, but it's amazing just to be able to see your daughter could participate in this one thing that really brought the whole family together.

BuckeyeFitzy: 24:33

And continues to, right? I, think even more so now that the play Pokemon Circuit has wrapped in GO. If anything, it has drawn our family's excitement levels up even more for the game.

David Hernandez: 24:43

Now, I'm gonna switch gears real quick before we get into Salt Lake. You are very detailed cause I saw the pictures you posted on your Twitter where you and your daughter had like pictures of different teams from I believe, past tournaments.

BuckeyeFitzy: 24:55

Yeah, so we do take a very, data analytics approach, preparing for things like big tournaments. So a far cry from what I talked about earlier, right? Now we have the opportunity, thanks to Go Stadium and other outlets that report on these events, to really kind of dive into the metrics and say, okay, what is happening at these Play Pokemon regional tournaments and what is the meta looking like? How is it developing? Our experience from doing Silph metas over the years has helped in this regard as well, because as a Silph meta goes on throughout the course of a month, if you start a tournament at the beginning of the month, it can be quite different from what you end up playing towards the end of the month. So same deal with play Pokemon. We've taken that same approach and print out meta charts that show, what percentage of players are playing each of the, the Pokemon, all the way down to team building, right? My favorite chart that I took a picture of during my tweet storm thereafter Salt Lake City was just a PVPoke sim chart of the top 30 Pokemon that we thought would make up the meta. And so I'm just looking at the matchups, the one and the two shields, and deciding,"okay, what fits the gaps that the other five Pokemon, leave on my team." I was thinking about that quite frankly, up until the night before the tournament in Salt Lake City, but again, we're taking a very data analytics approach to it as a family and trying to figure out,"okay, yes, we wanna run what we know and we wanna run what we enjoy." You know, we wanna do so in a way that gives us the best opportunity to succeed.

David Hernandez: 26:20

And the effort definitely showed because both you and your daughter were pretty close to facing each other in the final round. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I think had she had won against MormonMatt, you two would've played each other.

BuckeyeFitzy: 26:30

Yes. So we were one away from it twice, although I will admit, we weren't so sad that it didn't happen, because we had played each other in the winners bracket in Peoria two weeks before. So Salt Lake City was never really on the, agenda, right? When we looked at the regionals, schedule for this year, after we got back from Worlds, we said, okay, Peoria's a relatively short drive, we'll go to that one. But really it wasn't until the end of February in Knoxville that we were certain to go to another one. After we had invested all this time kind of preparing for Peoria, staying up to date on the meta, doing all this team building and practicing, we made the decision the Tuesday before that Paige and I were gonna fly out to and give it our best shot. So it was kind of a last minute decision. Obviously it worked out. I think having prepared for Peoria in such great detail, where all three of us in the family that can play did play and then kicking the tires on a couple experiences that we hadn't had before so Paige and I had to play each other in Peoria in the winter's bracket in the second round. I happened to beat her, but then our next matches, hers in the losers bracket and me in the winner's bracket were both on stream. That was the first time that either one of us had ever been on stream. It is quite a bit intimidating, the first time you go up there, no matter if you're used to that thing or not. We both took our lumps, but I felt like we learned from it. And then when we got to Salt Lake, where almost all of our matches were on stream. In fact, all of my matches were on stream. At that point, having been through the experience once, it's kind of a little bit old hat, right? And even if we had to play each other at the end of the bracket there in Salt Lake, we would've been through that experience before having done it just two weeks earlier in Peoria.

David Hernandez: 28:08

Do y'all have like any conversation beforehand saying like, if we face each other, we go all-out or like anything like that beforehand?

BuckeyeFitzy: 28:14

Oh yeah. No, there's no mercy in the Fitzgerald family uh, at, at all

David Hernandez: 28:19

Right.

BuckeyeFitzy: 28:20

And I know I've been asked that by my factions mates as well. They say,"well, you know, if you get paired against her, do you take it easy?" and it's like,"no, only one of the two of us had qualified for worlds. So she's, she's on her own, but it's just the irony as well of the first time she has to play in the, master's age bracket, she gets paired against her dad in the second round and it's not something that intimidates her, right? We actually do get paired quite a bit in our local Silph tournaments in that. So we play competitively against one another a fair amount as it turns out. It's still just difficult because it's one of your primary training partners and and they know all of your play style quirks and, vice versa, so it makes it quite difficult. The exciting thing about Salt Lake is the way that the bracket turned out, we were on opposite sides of the bracket and we both won all of our matches in day one. And had we both won, then we would've played each other, but we would've been playing each other in the winner's finals, which the winner of that is locked into a world's invite. Going back to kind of our family story after we had experience London. And what a neat trip that was. My wife and I decided for the family that we were gonna basically treat this as, Khaleesi's travel sport this year. Which sounds a bit silly, but again, she's not into sports or anything. She's 14 years old, right? How many more years are we gonna have to like truly invest in something and, give her a good life experience? And then the goal was for one of the three of us to get a qualification for Japan because again, it presents an opportunity to travel the world and expose our family to culture and an experience that they won't get otherwise. That's why we went to Peoria, that's why we ended up going out to Salt Lake, and we probably still will go to five to seven of the 15 US regionals. We're gonna do that because we're trying to give Khaleesi every opportunity to re-qualify, and experience Japan. But we also knew that if any one of us in the family qualified again, that we would go and then the whole family gets to go, which was the whole goal of the season. And same deal on the losers bracket, what you were just referring to earlier, had she beaten MormonMatt, then she would've played me in the losers final and same deal, the winner of that gets a world's invite. So in either of the cases, we would've played each other, unlike Peoria, where it was just good old Round 2, it would've been for the best stakes possible and it would've meant that the Fitzgerald family for sure was gonna take an invite. Obviously I know from, watching a bit of the stream after the fact and talking to people throughout the, the course of that weekend and after, you know, certainly Bird Power's story was, huge, her and Khaleesi both making top four was a huge story for, the young, female players of the game, which are certainly an underrepresented crew in the game. But then also just our family story, right? I mean, I don't know how many opportunities you're gonna get to see two family members make top eight. I think that's gonna be a pretty unique thing that won't repeat itself too often. And we were just so thrilled that it basically paid off everything that we'd kind of invested our time in preparing, practicing, team building, all of that. We were able to knock off who I quite frankly would consider to be better players than either one of us. But that's the great thing about PVP is that you have the opportunity to beat any battler you, come across. It's all just a matter of how you play that particular set of battles.

David Hernandez: 31:29

Speaking of Bird Power, since we're on the topic, she clearly has your family's number because y'all faced her so many times already. Have you look back at the footage, figured out ways you could have done something better?

BuckeyeFitzy: 31:38

My best chance of beating BirdPower was having Khaleesi do it for me. And I've told her that If she just throws the earthquake against her game three instead of going for the bait, and getting that bait called as BirdPower is often very great at doing and was just amazing at doing all weekend in Salt Lake. Then she's in the winner's Final with me and it's a whole different story at that point. You know, again, all credit goes to, to BirdPower. We actually got together with Bird Power and her aunt and essentially hung out with them all weekend. So from that Thursday night to the following Monday evening when we both flew out, we took that opportunity to build that friendship that had started back in worlds at London. The day before regionals started in Salt Lake, we were hanging out at the planetarium together. The girls were enjoying all the various science experiments, and fun things you can do at the planetarium. What we called ourselves after the weekend was Team Planetarium and on that Friday night, before regionals, BirdPower turns to the other two of us and says, Hey, why don't we all just top eight tomorrow?" I just kind of chuckle and I go,"okay, you know how unrealistic that"

David Hernandez: 32:42

famous last words,

BuckeyeFitzy: 32:43

Right? We had been at the convention center hanging out with Arrow and Cindy and some other, and Axon, some, really great battlers that people know from World Championships last year. So I knew the density of the quality of play was still gonna be really good. There were still some really top tier battlers there that you would have to overtake if you were gonna do well. And I'm just like, you know, what are the chances? Right? Two young girls and me, an old timer in the game, right? I do decent in individual Silph, but I don't consider myself top tier or anything by any stretch. So it's like,"hey, two out of three would be great, right?" That was my snarky response back to her is two outta three would be great. And then they both played in the morning group on the Saturday morning. They both won all their matches and were set to play one another in the top four. And I'll never forget before the afternoon bracket starts and I'm about to go up on stream. The two of them are chit chatting it up and they turn back to me and they say, Hey, all three of us are gonna make it right? Now it's your turn to hold up your end of the bargain." and I'm like,"oh, it's so no pressure, right?"

David Hernandez: 33:42

She called you out, man.

BuckeyeFitzy: 33:44

Definitely, but you know, there's nobody, I mean, certainly if both of our family members had gotten the invites, that would be best case scenario. But there's literally nobody else at that tournament and nobody else in the Pokemon Go competitive PVP community that I would rather lose to than BirdPower just because we've grown so close, right? In this case, the two kids have basically grown this awesome friendship and she and her aunt are just really neat people to hang out with, so, other than Khaleesi, I couldn't have handpicked a better opponent that I would wanna face.

David Hernandez: 34:15

Now you've actually said you had some strong thoughts about the removal of the senior division in Play Pokemon. Would you be willing to share those thoughts?

BuckeyeFitzy: 34:22

I've explained earlier our family story, right? The fact that even though we were quite known as battlers within our local community, we were just a family that decided,"Hey, let's go to one of these local events and see how it goes." And not every one of those stories is gonna turn into, oh, somebody qualified for worlds. But you might get that spark or you might have something happen like, what happened to Paige and admittedly, because the numbers were a little smaller on the senior division side, the opportunity was there. If you were a good battler, you could get a qualification to Worlds and certainly she had to do well enough to end up winning that travel award. The only two people she finished behind were Wda and Hot Pocket, who were both amazing battlers that can hold their own against every adult in the world. So she basically beat all of the battlers that, she had the opportunity to beat, and then opened up this opportunity for our family to go to Worlds, have this awesome experience of traveling, for the purpose of Pokemon, but also experiencing the world as you can, traveling for these events. I view the future of Pokemon Go and Play Pokemon competitive circuit as a huge opportunity for this game. The game, the phone app has only been around for six years. it doesn't have the same 25 plus year history of the video game series and the TCG and if you want this game to be a long-term player, in my opinion, you have to grow the future of the player base. So what happened to our family is a story that I think is repeatable. So if you get more, senior division players, so teenagers, that get these opportunities, and then can compete in their own age bracket, and have good successes, then that's something that they can kind of parlay into further interest as they grow into, you know, 16 plus and then go into the master's division. The other thing that struck me as we were sitting at worlds and watching some of the Vgc finals and the trading card game finals is that when those top eights would happen or those last rounds of Swiss would happen, the competitors on stream would be shown and then they'd put up their former accomplishments in the game. And for the master's division, almost half of the accomplishments listed for a lot of these players were World's Finalists, Seniors Division 2017, right? Or, you know, you, you pick a year. But it was stuff that happened back when they were in the Junior and Senior Division and you can see why those players then become the next generation of top tier battlers in their games. I think the same is gonna hold true for Pokemon Go and if we grow the circuits as much as we can and we give the kind of the organic opportunity for the younger trainers among us to have successes, and then parlay that towards the future, all you're gonna do is build the future of the player base in a battling community that, quite frankly, is very passionate. You're gonna have a natural, spinoff of people and if we don't have another, source of new players to bring into the game, then at some point, the game doesn't justify a spot on the Play Pokemon competitive circuit anymore. I know that I'm coming at this from a biased position, but I have a really interesting story to share that is, hey, our family would've never been this engaged in Pokemon Go, and we would've never been engaged in competitive Pokemon Go to this extent if it hadn't been for the opportunities granted in that first little partial season where they did have a seniors division bracket. Because if Khaleesi doesn't qualify for worlds, we don't go to London. And then yes, we might have attended a couple more regionals but we certainly wouldn't have been engaged as much with this and also encouraging, people in our community to do the same. I think if we're serious about this game being something that is still here 10 years from now, then this is just one of the things, looking at the other two games that have had that long-term success that you just have to do. I would like them to figure out the age of consent law. I am an attorney in my day job, it is not that type of law, but I can assure you that age of consent is a problem that can be overcome. Now, all that being said, this isn't to say that those players, especially on the top end of those players, they absolutely can compete in the master's division and they can do quite well. I'm not so concerned about those players. I'm concerned about the next tier of players down that if they don't have a way to get a little bit of success, they might not get that same spark and they might not then buy in for the long term in this game.

David Hernandez: 38:31

And, to tag team on that, I don't see you as saying that, oh, we need to make it easier for people. You see it in sports, like you don't see a six year old going into the N F L, that'd be suicide, right? But you see them do a little league and then you see'em go to elementary if it happens, and then middle, like there's a progression to where you can kind of go back, especially when they get that college level or the NFL level, you can kind of trace back to when they first started playing it. And it's like a whole, round of Escalades they've had since they've grown up.

BuckeyeFitzy: 38:59

Right. And I know one counter arguments I've heard is that the game isn't by its very nature, very inviting to younger generations. So we're just never gonna have that player pace and to that I kind of say, well, you know, my family cares to disagree right? Um, it's a little bit on these parents of young children to get their kids involved in this stuff. And if more families get involved, again, it's kind of a snowball effect, if they see that happen on stream, then they're gonna be more apt to get their kids involved and try to have that same type of experience with them. If anything, those were the most gratifying messages, and I got a ton of messages, the, the days after Salt Lake City from some players that I hadn't played for three years, coming out of the woodwork to send congratulations to us. But a couple of them just shared how they were watching it with their daughter and being like,"Hey, someday that's gonna be you and me." right? And that warms my heart. I'm like, yes, I certainly hope so. I certainly hope that other parents and kid combos can have that experience, because being able to share something like that with your child, is just again, one of the best experiences in life.

David Hernandez: 40:04

Now, let's pretend there's somebody who's maybe coming back into Pokemon Go and they have a daughter or son What would you tell them on how to get involved with their son, or daughter with Pokemon Go?

BuckeyeFitzy: 40:14

I mean, I think the best way to experience it is just to dive right in. The game is far more, interesting and I would argue user friendly than it was, four or five, six years ago. Things like the events that Niantic puts on, where they encourage you by Quest lines to participate or in the leveling process, right? They encourage you to take, part in all of the different aspects of the game, whether that's, PVP, battling or Raiding, or exploring. They really are trying to get you to experience at least a little bit all of the different parts of the game, as you're leveling up from 40 to 50. So same deal, I would tell somebody with young kids,"Hey, just start an account" and honestly doesn't matter if you're playing 10 minutes a day and just doing your daily incense, or if you're grinding for a couple hours. Go out there and, experience the game, pick up each different part of the game as you have an opportunity to, whether that's Raiding or battling and GBL and so on. If somebody were to come to me and say, Hey, I know a little bit about battling, What steps should I take next? I would encourage them, if they have the means and they're close to one, to just go to one of these in-person events. And that could be a Silph tournament or it could be one of these Play Pokemon regionals.

David Hernandez: 41:22

So with everything you've talked about, go into all the regionals and everything else, what do you consider your biggest accomplishment when it comes to Pokemon GO?

BuckeyeFitzy: 41:29

It's hard to not say qualifying for worlds right?

David Hernandez: 41:34

You can say it. Hey, I'm not, I'm not discounting that

BuckeyeFitzy: 41:37

I mean, I, I joked with my coworkers, right? As we're trying to explain, and again, I work in a law firm, so, it's a nerdy law firm, but nonetheless, it's a little hard to explain that we're investing in a travel sport that's not a sport, right? When many of their kids for my colleagues are actually in soccer and things that are a little bit more, normal, I guess? But regardless, trying to explain,"Hey, you know, the reason that we up and went to London as a family and I kind of cut away from work for a week and a half is because how often in your life do you qualify for a world championships?" and my line that I had said all throughout those months, earlier this year was, I never qualified for a world championship," so why wouldn't we support her? cuz this might be the only time that she gets to do something like that. And then what do you know, we go to two regionals in the next season, and then I'm the one that qualifies for for Worlds and I can no longer say that. Uh, it just dawned on me, you know, a day after Salt Lake City, I'm like, oh crap. Now I can't use that as an excuse that we're we're in right in, in a daughter's pursuits because who actually gets to qualify for worlds. But I guess I'll just have to explain that I am also quite nerdy myself, and have gotten into it just as much as the daughter that drug us along on this worldwide adventure initially did. I don't know that it still feels real, which maybe is even more indicative of why that's probably the, the best accomplishment,

David Hernandez: 42:54

It'll probably not feel real even when you get to Japan in a couple months.

BuckeyeFitzy: 42:57

I mean, the fact that I wasn't into Pokemon at all and then I got a custom license plate for my car and have, fully bought in to the fact that I am now a Pokemon nerd. Maybe that is actually the true life accomplishment here. I've gone from zero to 150 miles an hour on Pokemon fandom in, whatever five years? And I just love meeting all the people at these in-person events, whether it's Go Fests or Community Days or Play Pokemon events and just talking to'em. They come from all walks of life, right? I've just been really impressed at all the different professions, all the different interests, all the different cultural backgrounds you run across. and it, truly does make it rewarding to be a part of the community, to just see all of the diversity. We're quite busy with the day job stuff, but we're just as equally passionate about our community on the Pokemon side and experiencing this part of it as well. And I hope for anybody that enjoyed or was inspired by our story, like, do not feel like we are not approachable, like please by all means, come up and say hi. If it hasn't been clear from, ranting on about all of our crazy experiences this is what we're in it for, right?

David Hernandez: 44:03

I gotta ask this. So if they come asking for an autograph and they give you a Michigan, shirt of whatever from Michigan State, would you sign it?

BuckeyeFitzy: 44:09

Yeah, I mean, it's probably also gonna have a"Go Bucks" on it. I, I have no qualms signing Michigan gear, that's, that's totally fine and, it's a great university, I just, have a distaste for their sports teams.

David Hernandez: 44:25

Thank you for listening to another episode of As The Pokeball Turns. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you wanna support the show, consider becoming a Patreon by going to patreon.com/asthepokeballturns or by sharing the podcast with your friends and family, and I'll see you next time! Here's the sneak peek for the next episode of As The Pokeball Turns.

44:48

And the kid was about two weeks from being born. And so that morning I wake up while she's getting ready for work, I'm grabbing my shoes, I'm downloading the app, I'm grabbing some pokey snacks, some water, my bag, and out I go.