Week 12: Reset

With the momentum from last week, climbing up the ranks and improving my dribbling mechanics, I planned to continue with the same training. However, Rocket League had other plans…

Since Rocket League operates like soccer and hosts seasons for players to compete in, when the season ends, everyone’s rank is reset. So, after all of my hard work, playing unranked matches to get to Silver 2, dropping down to Bronze and then working my way back up to Silver 2 again, my rank was reset to Unranked when the old season ended and the new one began.

Thankfully, I didn’t lose any of my stats for how many matches I’ve played or number of wins, goals, saves, etc. But it was a bit of a shock to log on for the week to see that I was labelled as Unranked, when I knew I had just gotten back up to Silver 2. Nevertheless, this actually gave me an opportunity to see where I would be placed after another 10 unranked matches now that I have completed more than half of my training!

After this set of matches, I ranked in at Silver 2 Division 4! Not only is this higher than where I left off in the previous season last week (Silver 2 Division 1) but this is also higher than where I ranked in when I took my baseline measurement Week 2 (Silver 2 Division 3). Even though Silver 2 Division 4 isn’t that much higher than Silver 2 Division 3, there is a huge difference in my level of skill in actually playing Rocket League now, than there was 10 weeks ago.

A quick caveat about Rocket League, rank does not always equal skill. Yes, it is true that you need more skill to rank up, but it isn’t the only statistic that defines proficiency and ability. In fact, the way I played in these 10 matches was incredibly different from how I played in my baseline unranked matches Week 2. For one thing, my confidence and resilience during these matches was much higher. I did not get discouraged when I made mistakes, nor did I let the anger or frustration get to me so much that I rage quit out of the matches. For another thing, I am dribbling and making hook shots, and bounce shots, turning ball cam on and off, and attempting simple aerials that I never could have dreamt of attempting Week 2. So even though I didn’t rank astronomically higher than my baseline, my skill is substantially different when considering the subskills I have acquired since then.

Now that I am on the cusp of Silver 3, I am so close to getting to Gold. Going forward I am still going to implement emphasis training on my dribbling mechanics to nurture that subskill. I am also going to spend a lot of time next week rewatching my matches to take note of mistakes that I made and the reasoning behind those choices.