Support Bennett's Journey to Pokemon Worlds

After 18 months of hard work and dedication Bennett has earned an invite to the 2024 Worlds competition for the Pokemon Trading Card Game. The competition is in Honolulu, Hawaii in two months. He and his family are working on various projects to help him raise funds for the travel expenses associated with attending this competition.

Bennett was 8 years old when Covid-19 lockdowns were imposed. As teachers and introverts our family thrived during lockdown, but emerging from it became a challenge for our youngest. We were new to the city we are living in and were struggling to make connections and find events to get him out of the house and engaging with anything other than school. Bennett and his father went to our local board game shop and learned how to play the Pokemon game. This community accepted him with open arms and every week he had somewhere to be and formed friendships and relationships that kept him motivated to go. It was through these friends that we learned about competitive events in the TCG community.

Bennett attended his first regional event in March of 2023, and when he walked out of that competition he said "I want to go to Worlds in 2024!" We were surprised by his excitement and told him that if he did the legwork to find out what we need to do we would support his journey towards that goal.

Bennett has put in the work every day, studying the game and analyzing strategies. He transitioned into an older age group for this season, the Seniors division, and despite being both relatively new to the niche and one of the youngest players in this group he has been successful in earning the championship points needed to attend the World Championship tournament.

Bennett's best friends are Pokemon players and we are so grateful for the friendships and encouragement from our local West Virginia community. He has been dreaming about Hawaii all year, connecting any project at school that he could to learning more about it. He has studied the geography of volcanoes and written a persuasive essay on why Hawaii is a good location for specialized telescopes due to high elevation and low light pollution. His Social Studies fair project was on the history of the statehood of Hawaii. He is hoping not only to go and play Pokemon but to spend a day or two exploring some of the history and sites of what he has studied all year, both for the card game and in his academic work.