The Sunny Hills eSports team opened its second year of Pokémon Unite gameplay with a dominant victory, sweeping Liberty High School [LHS] in back-to-back games on Monday, Sept. 22.
The Lancers clinched a 2-0 sweep, outscoring their opponent 958-87 in the first game and 1,014-53 in the second.
Captain senior Ting Hin Chan, who plays the top lane, said the team seized control from the beginning.
“We just absolutely ran away early in the game,” Chan said. “They were already outmatched in the draft, and once we started farming and getting levels, it wasn’t even close.”
Chan, who recorded more than 37 kills and nearly 500 points scored across both games, credited both the team’s macro play — map awareness and timing — and micro play — individual skill—for the result.
In Pokémon Unite, two five-player squads face off for 10 minutes, aiming to collect energy by defeating wild Pokémon or opponents and then depositing that energy into the enemy’s goal zones. The team with the higher score at the end of the match wins.
For Sunny Hills, the main strategy was to get an early lead and capitalize on it, senior Marcus Chang said.
Chang, the bottom lane defender, said his role was to keep teammates alive and stop LHS from scoring.
“[As a bottom lane defender], you pressure the enemy bottom laners and protect your partner,” Chang said. “In team fights, you keep the enemy team back.”
The Lancers maintained control of the map throughout both games, consistently shutting down LHS’s opportunities to farm energy and score. Despite LHS’s attempts to regroup, the team’s coordination allowed them to extend their lead.
“I don’t think they had any chance of coming back,” Chan said. “Even if they tried, they didn’t know how to do it, so I feel we dominated that game.”
The victory also continued the group’s streak of dominance. Last year, in the Pokémon Unite squad’s inaugural season, the team went undefeated without dropping a single game.
The Lancers’ next Pokémon Unite match is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 29, with the opponent to be determined when the team queues on game day.
