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North American Championships is over and Kyle Santucci is your new North American Champion for 3x3! Congratulations to everyone who won, congratulations to everyone who got the results that they wanted, and congratulations to everyone who just qualified and came out! Thank you to the volunteers and staff members for hosting such a well run competition! This is only the 2nd major competition I’ve been to, but for it to run as well as US Nationals did, or better, with twice the amount of people is insane and such an accomplishment for the organizing team and the southeast region.
Overall I had a good time. I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, but that happens sometimes. I didn’t get a hotel or airbnb because I live right at an hour away from the convention center, so I drove back and forth every day. I’m not used to driving 2 hours a day in Raleigh traffic in 100 degree weather, but it got better/easier as the weekend went on, I would do it again if I had the choice. I saved hundreds of dollars by doing it. I knew exactly what room it was in, I’ve been there a few times for Galaxy con, but it didn’t really click how big the room was until I got there. The room was massive, but I think it was a perfect size for the competition. You took an escalator/stairs down and you could see the whole floor. They had 4 stages, spectator areas just in front of them, and then a huge section of tables for people to sit and talk at. My only complaint was that there wasn’t as much space between tables as I thought there should be so it was hard to get around sometimes.
My first event was 5x5 at about 10am. I did absolutely abysmal for what I was hoping for. I hate that it was the first event I competed in and it was so early in the day. I was dogsitting for my aunt the week leading up to it, and wasn’t really used to sleeping at her house. I went to sleep pretty late Wednesday night and then woke up at 4am. I didn’t have to leave the house until about 7am to be able to make it, so I missed out on some good snoozing. I did get a chance to stop and eat breakfast, and I got parked next door to the convention center just fine but I was tired and nervous. The runners on the red stage at that particular time were incredibly quiet, and everything was moving really fast. The stage was also super bouncy, and felt like I was on a trampoline at some points. I couldn’t focus that well. Then once I did a solve it felt like I would barely get sat down before I would get called up again (not a bad problem to have usually). Overall the 5x5 average wouldn’t have been bad, and it really wasn’t a terrible time for me anyway, except I got a DNF because I did a G perm from the wrong position and didn’t see it before I stopped the timer. That DNF was my 2nd solve, so it ruined my mentality for the rest of the average. Then also for like the next day I was pretty mad/upset. The average would’ve been around a 1:08 instead of a 1:10, so it wasn’t like I missed out on PB or even round 2 because of that solve. It was just really aggravating to practice all year and a stupid mistake cost you 1 of only 5 solves you get. I was hoping to be closer to sub-1 by this time, but oh well. Hopefully at my next competition I’ll be able to break the 1:05 barrier.
Next up was OH after lunch. I actually did crazy good in this compared to normally. I never practice OH at all. It’s something I wish I was better at, but I don’t have the drive to try lol. I ended up with a 17.12 average, and I’m glad I finally got sub-20. That was a big milestone for me for 2 handed solving, so now that I’ve broken that in competition for OH it’s really cool. It was decently lucky, I almost skipped all the way to a sub-17 average which would’ve been incredibly insane. It was a bunch of OH friendly cases, and the last solve was a PLL skip, so I don’t think I’ll be able to get something like that again easily, but sub-20 again probably wouldn’t be too hard. I was getting anywhere from mid-18 to low-20s in practice right before I went up. Not enough for round 2, but way better than what I was expecting. I might try to throw in some OH practice for the next competition I have. Once I was done with it I went home for the evening.
Friday was also kind of rough for competing. I thankfully didn’t have to be at the convention center until around 1:30 or 2 to for sure make my group time for 4x4, the only event I competed in that day, so I got to sleep in a little bit and do some stuff in the morning before I left. I showed up at around 11am to make sure I had a good parking spot, I could get some lunch and also get some practice in. I’ve talked before about how I do Yau in an uncommon way, so if you want you can go look for that post (I actually did meet someone who does the same thing I do with the 1 misaligned cross edge though, so I know I’m not crazy in coming up with it myself but neither of us can remember where we learned it). I’ve started trying to switch to the “normal” way so I can maybe improve. I’m generally slower after switching, but I also get mixed up on trying to undo 10 years of doing it my old way, so I’m about 10 seconds slower in some cases. This mostly comes down to my lack of practice and lack of commitment to one or the other. It’s just not as fun of an event anymore since trying to switch, so I don’t try as hard. I also played myself because I wanted to use some dnm-137 lube on the cube to make it slightly faster because it felt gross, but I ended up using some mystic lube on accident (the bottles look super similar, and both lubes are black/grey in the bottle). Instead of my cube feeling slightly cleaner and faster, it felt gunkier and nastier (no hate against mystic, it’s good it just wasn’t what I needed at that moment). I didn’t have time to clean it out or properly break it in. It was also about this time that my delegate friend came to chat, so I stopped practicing. They gave me the scoop on a lot of stuff going on in the WCA currently (feelings behind the clock removal decision, some long term stuff going on that I’m not going to disclose), but then also just catching up because we don’t get to talk as much anymore. It was a really nice conversation that was way more fun than 4x4 practice lol. I ended up with a 42 second average that was pretty consistent, more consistent than a lot of my 4x4 averages. I did have a 54 second solve where I totally forgot how to do edge pairing or something in the middle though lol. I went home after that. I was probably going to leave anyway, because even though I wanted to watch 5x5 finals, I wanted to avoid Friday traffic. Max Park ended up winning and getting NAR in it, which I kinda hate that I missed, but oh well.
Saturday was much better. My brother and mom came up to watch me, so I wasn’t as lonely which was nice. My brother drove so I didn’t have to think about that either. It was the 4th of July, so there was a parade going on that morning and they were supposed to have closed some of the roads we would need to go on to get into the garage I had been using, but thankfully we got in no problem and I was there well before I needed to do Skewb. This is another event I don’t practice at all and just decided to compete in because I could. I had state record in it at one time I think. A good average for me would’ve been sub-7, but I knew if I got lucky I could get sub-6. I was kinda worried right before I went up because one of the corner caps was not wanting to stay on, and I didn’t have any glue. I ended up using some FZ-superhoney lube (incredibly thick and sticky lube) in the holes where the cap slides in to get it to stick. I’m not sure how well it worked specifically, but the cap didn’t come off during my average, so if you have some it might work as glue in a pinch. I ended up with a high 8 second average, not great, but it’s whatever. I’ve thought about trying to get good at skewb, but I don’t think the skills in it transfer to anything that well, and I’m not a crazy high TPS person.
After that we kinda just hung out for a little bit until lunch. My brother and I decided to hit up this food court our sister said was really good for some tacos. Her and her husband go up there for galaxy con every year, and they usually stay the weekend so they look for good food spots while they’re there. The taco place was closed unfortunately. I guess maybe they closed for the 4th figuring that people would want burgers more? I’m not sure. My sister got an earful about that though because she’d been bugging me all weekend up to that point “you gotta get these tacos, you gotta get the tacos, hey did you get the tacos?”. It wasn’t her fault obviously, and I hate that I didn’t get any, but it was funny to make fun of her for it. Instead we got some Korean corndogs, which were alright. They were humongous and very filling, but they were expensive and I was tired of eating it before I was done. I think though if I had to do it again I’d have gotten something else. There was this katsu sandwich (Japanese cutlets basically, chicken katsu, tonkatsu which is pork) place that sounded good. Or I would’ve just went on a day that the taco place was open lol.
The next event I had was 3x3. After not having gotten the best results up until this point I was really worried about doing well. I did about 100-200 solves while I was waiting and was getting low-mid 8s, so I was feeling ok. I use a phone timer in my lap so I knew that my real times would end up being a little higher to account for pickup/drop times, but I was happy with how I was doing and lost some of the nervous-ness. Once I got called up I started to get a little nervous again, but I tried hard to not let my mind wander like I normally would let it while I wait in the competitors’ area. I tried being very mindful as to not get surprised when I got called up. It actually worked pretty well. Normally when I get called it’s like a jolt back to reality. Even though I’m expecting to get called up, I don’t know why that frightens me so bad (stupid brain). I got a 9.64 average which isn’t a bad time for me. A few of the solves had some lockups or larger than average pauses though. I’ve only recently started getting sub-10 averages in competition, so I was happy to get another. The best time was an 8.49, which is decent for me at home. After that we headed for home because I didn’t have anything else to compete it that day, and we wanted to avoid traffic. At this point in the weekend I was kinda ready to be done. The driving, the heat,the amount of people, etc. It was starting to get to me and I was tired lol. But I made it to round 2 by about 50 spots. To be honest though, I was excited I made it and would’ve been upset if I hadn’t. I wasn’t mad with the average I had gotten, but I knew I could do a little better.
Sunday morning I woke up and left the house pretty early. It was a really easy drive that morning because nobody was on the road, so I just cruised there and got there well before the time I was supposed to. I got to the spectator’s area and did about another 100 solves before it was my time to go up. This morning I was so much calmer. I was a little jittery from an energy drink, but mentally I was pretty solid. I knew for a fact I wasn’t getting to semi-finals, so I just had to bust out something cool. I ended up with a 9.61 average, which even though it was only 0.03 seconds faster than the one from the day before, it felt much better. I had only 1 big lockup and a few small pauses, but the solves felt much more fluid. I think the cases were just worse so that’s why the average wasn’t as fast. Either way I was much happier with this one. It also ended up being a pure sub-10 average which was another goal I had going into this weekend. All my sub-10 averages (even my sub-9 average) weren’t pure sub-10. So I think that’s a little bit of improvement I can be happy for. After that I waited to make sure I got knocked out and then once I hit 49th place in the live rankings I left. I was 244th in first round, so a lot of people would’ve had to DNF or do awful for me to have made it lol. Then I went home and watched the finals on Youtube.
Throughout the weekend I did get my picture with a few people. I met Dylan Miller early Thursday morning, this one wasn’t terribly cringey, but it probably could’ve been at a better time. I always trip over my words like crazy. He’s a really chill person, and I think he takes being popular pretty well. Rowe Hessler I caught during lunch one day (he wasn’t eating, I made sure lol), and he was still as cool as I remember him. I said something like “we competed together 13 years ago I don’t know if you’d remember” like he would in the slightest. I felt really dumb about that lol. I’ll always look up to Rowe though, that’s one of the GOATs. I got Kyle Santucci on Saturday morning I think. I knew him mostly from PSL and the almost one sided beef with Dylan Miller (the casters did Dylan Miller dirty during their 3rd head to head and it was really funny lol). I think maybe I got him at a bad time too, but it was cool to see him. I also can say I got his picture before he became North American Champion lol. I did get to see Max Park, and I was within a few feet of him, but I didn’t get a chance to get my picture with him. His mom kept a pretty good eye over him and made sure he was where he needed to be when he needed to be there, so I didn’t want to interrupt them or make them late for anything. Him and Matty Hiroto Inaba I think had a signing session upstairs at one point where I probably could’ve gotten my picture with him, but I wasn’t sure if they were just doing autographs or not. I didn’t bring my book so I decided not to go which I kinda regret. He follows me on Instagram and I think we’re friends on facebook, he even told me happy birthday one time, so that’s pretty dope. Apart from Feliks Zemdegs I think I’ve gotten a picture or autograph from everyone that I could want. Maybe Feliks will happen someday. Worlds?
Once again thank you to all of the staff and everyone there who made it such a great time, I hope you know your efforts were appreciated and it couldn’t have been done without you.