MCCC’s Dovidio wins eSports title
Ambler native earns top spot in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament
Paul Dovidio made history last month.
The Montgomery County Community College freshman won the 2021 Fall National Junior College Athletic Association esports “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” championship on Dec. 10. It’s the first national championship for the Mustangs esports program, which launched in spring 2020.
Dovidio, a 19-year-old from Ambler, dropped the first two games of the best-of-five championship before winning three straight to claim the national title with a 3-2 win.
“I tried to keep myself motivated,” he said after falling behind 2-0 and thinking a loss was likely. “I took one game, then the next game I won and then it was the final match. I noticed that this is it and I took all my thought to it. I took my time. I was very patient because I wanted to win. I didn’t want to take two more games and then not win it. If I was going to get that big of a comeback I wanted to win.”
Dovidio used two characters throughout his championship run — Donkey Kong and Bayonetta. After cruising through the first five rounds of the tournament, he decided to use Bayonetta in the final due to the character’s advantage over his opponent, who used Terry.
“(Bayonetta’s) just a better character than Donkey Kong,” he said. “I just used Donkey Kong because he’s a fun character to me, but Bayonetta is just better. I used her for some of the matchups because some of the characters do better against some characters and some do worse against other characters. I knew if I played Bayonetta against his Terry it would go a lot nicer than going Donkey Kong.”
The 2020 Wissahickon graduate started playing Super Smash
Bros., a fighting game series published by Nintendo, when he was 12-years-old. In 2016 his friends suggested he play competitively and he’s been competing in tournaments ever since. He won a 77-person tournament a week before the national championship.
Dovidio started at MCCC this fall and joined the esports program shortly after starting classes.
The field of 64 playoff tournament started at the end of November. Dovidio worked his way through the opening rounds before winning his semifinal matchup on Dec. 7 and the final three days later.
This upcoming semester, Dovidio plans to compete 4 vs. 4 team battles and normal single battles.
Dovidio’s championship wraps up a strong 2021 for the Mustangs esports program.
In April, MCCC’s Kiratika Ariyamitr was named to the 2021 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholars Award list of recipients by “Diverse: Issues in Higher Education” magazine.
One month later, the Mustangs won their first league title in the first-ever Collegiate Aces Series “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” tournament powered by Philly Esports.
MCCC’s eSports team is the school’s eighth collegiate sport and first allgender team. They compete against colleges from across the country as part of the National Association of Collegiate Esports, which includes more than 170 member schools and 5,000 student-athletes. They also compete as part of the National Junior College Athletics Association Esports, composed of more than 60 two-year colleges.