The Rookie Of The Year 2010
The Nominations
2010 was a hectic year as far as the ROTY title went. The topic was commonplace throughout the year, and as the winter dawned the subject blanketed the entire text forums. As the latter part of the year came around, multiple threads and polls popped up to discuss the contenders. Once all the nominations and discussions had died down, we were left with five names that appeared to have the most valid claims. Ambitious Flow, Vandahl, Spooky Deep, Los Briggs & GRizzEAT. Ambitious Flow and GRizzEAT were the prolific battlers, both racking up over 100 battles each during the year and toppling some solid opposition. Vandah, Spooky Deep & Los Briggs battles much less frequently, Spooky in particular, but impressed with the quality of there writing. At the time as the discussions raged on regarding who was the best rookie of the year, two names fell beside the wayside. Los Briggs due to his lack of victories and GRizzEAT due to his tendancy to snipe more often than not. This left three textcees to battle it out for the crown.
AmBitious Flow Vs Vandahl Vs Spooky Deep
Multiple forum polls were initiated to try and show a clear winner, and all resulted in near-draws. It was the hope of many that a mini-tournament or battle league could be agreed to allow a title to be earnt by one of the three but the trio was never able or willing to commit to any definitive contest. Taking the three textcees individually, they all had good resumes to go with their claims. Ambitious Flow had defeated Mayneak, Spooky Deep had bested Revan, & Vandahl had beaten reEFer. All three are (or will be) Hall Of Famers and show that the rookies had a strong caliber of writing skill to be able to snatch victories from them. Unfortunately the only occasion of the three matching wits with each other came in the form of Spooky Deep Vs Ambitious Flow, which Spooky won by 1%. which again was not strong enough of a victory to completely knock Ambitious Flow from the running. As many members of the site sought to find a means to decide the actual ROTY, the chances of a solution happening disppeared when Spooky requested that he was taken out of the running, due to him having no desire to be considered a Rookie Champion. Ambitious Flow also declined to battle Vandahl due to personal issues with him and eventually all chances for a champion to be crowned evaporated. The answer of the question: 'Who was the 2010 Rookie Of The Year' is simply one of opinion. The element of hindsight fails to help find a solution too, as of this writing (Oct 2012) of the five names orginally considered for the title, GRizzEAT is probably the most accomlished of the group in terms of tournament performance and big name scalps. Spooky still battles rarely but impresses with the quality of his writing. Ambitious Flow has all but ghosted the site, ironically not battling much after 2010. Los Briggs found himself banned on occasions for offences including plagiarism, which has dropped his repuation below the levels it reached in '10. Vandahl also departed the site for a while before making a comeback in the second half of '12. He has continued to show his potential but appears to not have the desire to try and really leave a mark on the site. In a year consumed by debate over the subject, 2010 eventually failed to produce a definitive Rookie Of The Year.
Crowning A Champion
After much debate, it was decided that the ROTY Championship for this year would be awarded to the person who won the public vote for the title during that year. As a result the belt was eventually handed to AmbitiousFlow.