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I wanted to come back and talk about my experience during Charlotte Winter 2025 a little bit more. I had a really good time, I forgot how much fun it is to compete. Hopefully I’ll be able to compete again later this year. I’m sorta looking into the logistics of South East Championships, but travel is gonna be a pain, so I probably won’t be going to that one. If another one in Charlotte (or closer) with 5x5 comes up I’ll probably attend.
Recap
I live about 2 hours from Charlotte, so I knew I was going to have to get up early if I wanted to make the 7:30am check-in. I planned on getting up at about 4 or 4:30am so I could leave by about 5am. I packed all my stuff up the night before and laid my clothes out so I’d be ready to go, and I took some melatonin to go ahead and get to sleep at about 9 or 9:30. I woke up a few times during the night, and finally settled on waking fully up at 3:19am. I decided to leave earlier than planned (about 4:45am) since I was so excited and anxious and just wanted to get on the road.
I am not a big fan of driving. I’ll do it if I have to, but I’ll never be the first person to offer to drive anywhere. It was dark for most of my drive there, which was fine. Since it was so early there weren’t many cars on the road. I got there at about 6:15 or 6:30, so I for sure made the check-in time (haha). It took me a minute to find the student union building it was being held in. I was going based off of Google Maps which took a second to get my bearings and which way I was going. On the way in I saw my friend Cady Shields and ran over to talk and follow her in. I got to see my buddy Silas Starling, and I saw Zach Ochs who totally changed since the last time I saw him (neither of us recognized eachother). I got put on a different stage than most of the people I knew, which kinda stunk, but I got to talk to Cady a good bit which was nice.
Fun fact about Cady that I’ll always bring up: the first competition she ever went to was one that she hosted in Charlotte. Crazy undertaking, but it was a really fun one. That was the first time I ever got a podium placement.
Competing was alright, I was really nervous and the nerves never fully shook off. However, I did exactly how I thought I would for everything though, so I wasn’t totally disappointed. I figured I wouldn’t make any finals except for 5x5 (which was a combined final), and that I’d get to 3x3 round 2. I was only there to compete in 3x3 and 5x5 mainly and I had high hopes for them. Skewb and OH are fun but I never practice them so I wasn’t worried too much about my placings for those.
First round of 3x3 started out good with a mid 10 and 2 high 9s. Still possible to get a PB or even sub 10 average. After the first 3 I just got more nervous and finished out with 2 12s. I was really worried about getting a PB for an event so my competition PB streak would keep going, so to miss it for 3x3 off the bat was a little disheartening. But 5x5 was later in the day, so I figured I’d hopefully be warmed up by that time and able to get a PB average or single there.
Skewb and OH were next, and neither of them were anything to write home about. OH was kinda neat because I got 2 sub 20 solves, but it wasn’t enough for a sub 20 average or anything. I haven’t gotten one of those yet in competition. Skewb was pretty bad, I got 2 9s. I had just gotten a new skewb for the competiton since I didn’t think my stickered one was gonna be legal with how bad the stickers were. Instead of waiting on shipping for stickers for a cube I didn’t really practice anyway, I decided to just get a stickerless one and get it set up by the cubicle. It’s nice, but I’m just not good at it lol
During lunch I had a terrible headache, it was pretty gnarly. I brought some tylenol with me, so that sort of helped, but I was kind of miserable, tired and ready to go home by this point. In hindsight, I probably should’ve gotten something to eat since I only had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and there was a Wendy’s downstairs. But I went the rest of the comp without eating and had 400mg of Caffeine like a genius :)
Finally it was time for 5x5. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but for all of my solves I got put at station 1 which was where the camera for the Clicky Studios livestream was. I had told my friends and family about the livestream and was texting them when I would be going up so they could try to spot me. While I was competing, I wasn’t allowed to look at the stream, so I couldn’t tell them for sure whether I was on camera or not. Even though I was potentially on camera, I don’t think that really had an effect on my nerves. I didn’t get a horrible result, it just wasn’t what I was hoping for. I was really hoping for it to be a PB single and average, but I was about 2 seconds off of both. I had practiced for 5x5 the most, so this was really annoying. Nothing crazy about any of the solves from what I remember. I think I screwed up my last 2 edges on 1 of them and had to redo some centers.
Then it was on to 3x3 round 2. I was super nervous by this point because I still hadn’t gotten a PB. I had to lock in and get either a sub 10.72 average of 5 or a sub 8.86 single. First solve: 10.99, I’m thinking “ok, not bad, I still got this”. Second Solve: 8.09, “phew, PB single, thank goodness the streak continues”. After that a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I could just solve without worrying about anything. Now, I was just going for a PB average, but if I didn’t get it then it’s no biggie. Third solve I pick up the cube to inspect and realize it was the same scramble as number 2. I told my judge but he kept judging like it was a normal solve and called “8 seconds”. Which, at the time I thought was strange, but actually this was the best outcome. If it was a misscramble and he kept juding like normal then I’d get another attempt, but if it was scrambled correctly and I was mistaken I’d probably get a DNF for not starting on time. So quickly I gathered myself back into inspection, did it and then went and talked to Katie Hull who was one of the delegates there besides Cady. She was able to confirm based on the video that I had taken that I did get the same scramble, so they gave me and extra attempt which was really just the real third scramble. I was both nervous and ready to be done now, so I just got the rest of the solves out of the way, nothing really special to finish it out. I wish that hadn’t happened because then I probably would’ve done better, but oh well. I ended up with a PB average of 10.48.
The 8.09 I got is actually a little interesting because I could not remember my solution from the competition. I knew I got a PLL skip and I knew which OLL it was for, but I couldn’t get the right start to the cross. I finally figured it out by slowing the video down, but I really don’t know why I did the cross that way. It worked out cuz it was an easy solve, and the cross I maybe should’ve done turned out to have a not as of a good solution. I can’t execute it as quickly that is. I definitely didn’t do the same solution when I got that scramble for the 2nd time.
After they started inputting my group for 3x3 round 2 I kept checking and saw that I was in 7th place, which was cool but I was so bummed I was going to be in finals. I was so ready to go home, but I was gonna stay if I was going to be in finals. Then I realized there was 1 more group and that there was a chance I’d get knocked out. So I kept looking at people’s solves like “ok, Kerry Creech is in this group, that’s one spot down. Oh he’s getting a sub 10 average, that’s another.” I saw I was 1 spot ahead of Silas, so I said to myself “if I’m in 20th place, I’ll give up my spot for Silas” (I’m not even sure if they bump people to finals if someone leaves). But I ended up placing 24th and headed out.
I was really excited to go home, even though I was having a blast, I was tired and hungry and my back was killing me. So I was ecstatic when I saw that I had been knocked out of finals. I went and said my goodbyes, said I’d see them later and went home. I left at around 5pm, so it was light out for just long enough for me to get back to a point on the road where I wouldn’t be in crazy traffic and wouldn’t have to make a bunch of turns. I did get stuck behind a semi-truck for about 30 minutes which was annoying. It was on this really long stretch of 2 lane road that curved every couple hundred feet. I got home at about 8pm and told my friends about the day and checked the live stream and everything.
It was so much fun, I had such a good time. Thank you to the delegates and the organizers. I hope to compete again soon!
Livestream
Clicky Studios was the one to host the livestream for this competition, and although it seemed like a cool idea, I was a little disappointed with it. I hadn’t looked at any of their other live streams, so I wasn’t really sure how they were structured, which, is my fault since I didn’t do my research to set my expectations right. I thought that it was going to be a nice way for family or friends who couldn’t come to the competition to be able to watch their sons/daughters/friends compete. I thought it was going to be a very wide angle type of view so you could see all the stations and be able to point out which station so-and-so was at. Then at the end during finals they’d change setups so they could do more commentary on those competing, and wrap it up with the awards. Instead it was a pretty narrow view of the same few sections along with some commentary. Although they did film a good bit of finals and the awards ceremony.
I was seeing it more from a family/friendly competition perspective instead of a competitive/professional view. Since getting back into the Youtube side of cubing I’m seeing now how people are working towards trying to make speedcubing into a legitimate sport and trying to give people avenues to watch competitions from home, and get more people watching it. So, in reality they did what they thought was best.
I have to wonder though if combining the 2 models could be better. I think having a few camera angles and switching them during the competition would be much better and you’d at least get more perspectives from everyone instead of just the people that the commentators know. I understand this is a pretty new thing and they don’t necessarily have the funds for multiple cameras or personalities to have behind the camera, and maybe they’re already planning on this for the future. I figured I’d give my 2 cents on it anyway.
There were also a lot of issues getting the stream started and there were a lot of ads. These were probably unavoidable because I’m not sure how early they can reasonably get into the venue to setup, and I don’t really know what sort of issues they were having, but it made it seem a little unprofessional. The ad breaks are also probably unavoidable because they’re trying to make their money and continue doing this. It just seemed excessive. I’m looking forward to seeing how this venture turns out though, and I will be on the lookout for competitions like Nationals and Worlds to be livestreamed.
Happy Birthday Nanny
Today is also my late grandmother’s birthday. It’s the first one since she’s passed so it’s hard to think about. Our birthdays are only a week apart, mine on the 12th and hers on the 19th, so we’ve always celebrated really closely. When I first came home from the hospital my mom surprised her with me. Nanny thought it was something for an early birthday/Valentine’s gift. What a lame present. Love you and miss you lots Nanny.