Lake Stevens high schooler wins an 'Madden NFL' championship in the national title. LAKE STEVENS -Making the plays and operating big plays is what has 16-year-old Jair Velazquez winning awards on the virtual field of football mut coins. Last month, wielding an Xbox controller from the comfort of the privacy of his home Velazquez, a junior at Lake Stevens High School, was awarded the North American Scholastic Esports Association's spring 2021 national championship in "Madden NFL 21" the latest version in the game's long running football videos.

Simply declaring he won could be underestimating the performance of Velazquez. He was the dominant player. "I simply swept cleanly every single person," the teen said. After a six-week regular league which began in the early months of the month of March Velazquez made it to the semifinals with the highest seed. He did a great job of destroying his rivals to get to the final game.

On April 23, it took just under the hour Velazquez to win the best of five finals and take home the title. Internet glitches and a younger brother put him in more danger than his rivals. Despite his background as an Lake Stevens Viking, Velazquez carved through the tournament playing as his team, the Green Bay Packers. MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers and star wide receiver Davante Adams, along with the team's fast pace and a streamlined playing style flawless, Velazquez said.

It was not the Super Bowl, but tens of thousands of people watched the live broadcast of Velazquez's performance, and a recording of the matchup has logged more than 340,000 viewers on the streaming platform Twitch. Officials from Washington's high school esports association believe Velazquez is the state's first esports national champion. In the midst of the epidemic that kept the students separated, video games at Lake Stevens High School experienced an increase in popularity.

"People were already interacted with one another online, digitally, and this was a natural extension of that," added Trevor Wood, an 11th-grade English instructor and advisor for the school's video gaming club cheap Mut 22 coins. "The school as well as the district were both very keen on seeing the development of the video game group, because it was the primary ways for kids to interact with each other socially."