Sophomore Jack Oldenski of Middletown played in a Fortnite tournament on Dec. 13 with two teammates. This was far from an average tournament: he was up against over 200,000 competitors. Oldenski and his two teammates won $400 each for placing in the top 150 teams out of about 70,000 teams. But before he got to such a high level of competition in Fortnite, he played basketball.

Oldenski played basketball for about seven years until he was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, a lump below the kneecap that causes severe pain, when he was 13 years old. 

“I was probably playing with [the disease] for a couple months,” Oldenski said. “Progressively, it got worse because I wasn’t really treating it. It got to the point where I had really bad pain in my knee and then I realized that I had to go to a physical therapist.” 

He had to go to physical therapy for about six months, after which he decided to stop playing basketball.

“I was pretty upset. I played basketball for seven years at that point and I really enjoyed playing basketball. But it eventually felt a little dry. In hindsight, it’s probably because I never really took a break,” he reflected.

After quitting basketball, a new competitive fire arose in Oldenski’s heart with Fortnite. According to Oldenski, serious practice sessions and tournament rounds in Fortnite usually take about two to three hours, so combined with extensive solo practice, it makes for a very time-consuming e-sport that requires a lot of dedication. However, Oldenski showed a lot of natural talent for the game in his first and favorite tournament. 

“They hosted an event called the Fortnite World Cup, and it had a $50 million prize pool. I played on a relatively bad computer and I managed to make $300 in the solo events of the World Cup,” he explained. “That was the first time I was like, ‘I could actually be really good at this.’”

Oldenski continues to compete in Fortnite and is planning to return to competition soon. 

“I feel like in a way, it’s changed my life,” he said. “I feel like it’s going to help me in competitive aspects of my life in the future.”