News for Nerds: Football player turned pro gamer aiming for high score

Many see video games as an occasional pastime. Then there are players who consider it way more than a hobby, hooking in daily. Finally, there are those rare few who have turned gaming into a career.

David Repicky is one of those rare few.

The 28-year-old Oklahoma resident has been picking up joysticks and controllers since he was a young lad growing up in Naples. His first game was “Sonic the Hedgehog” on the Sega Genesis, originally released in 1991, when Repicky was just a toddler.

But that type of game — “Sonic” is known as a platformer — is far from what he ended up discovering was his calling. While Repicky was studying business at Oklahoma State University, he fell in love with fighting games. Specifically, titles like “Mortal Kombat,” “Injustice” and “Street Fighter.”

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Seeing that he could easily hold his own against his friends when they played games from that genre, Repicky decided to take the next step. He started attending and playing against legit competitors at tournaments, both in his new home state of Oklahoma and across the country.

His journey recently led him back home to Florida, where he took on roughly 400 fellow gamers at the annual Community Effort Orlando competition (in Orlando, obviously). Before he picked up his custom-made joystick, though, Repicky came back to his hometown of Naples, where he visited with his old high school buddies and former football players as part of Golden Gate High School’s Class of 2007 10-year reunion.

Along with toasting to their heyday as classmates and teammates on the high school’s football team, where Repicky said he was the “Rudy” of the team — referring to the famous 1993 biopic about Notre Dame walk-on Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger — Repicky had something even bigger to celebrate.

Just days before, Repicky signed a contract with Clean Kill, an organization that sponsors teams of ultra video game enthusiasts who have proven themselves at beating down digital opponents and sends them to tournaments all around the country to take on fellow carbon-based opponents. Repicky agreed to work as the group’s marketing guru. Repicky graduated from OSU in 2013 with a business administration degree, along with a minor in marketing.

His job is to help the company and its players look good and get noticed at the dozens of competitions they attend every year. At the same time, Repicky is interested in furthering his own image and brand as a professional gamer.

Like many other hobbies, interests and careers, the e-sports industry is super-competitive. People are out for blood, so to speak, and to gain a following, mainly on social media. Today, there are websites devoted exclusively to hooking pro gamers up with wannabes. One prime example of that is Twitch, a YouTube-like site where viewers can watch others play games live, all day long if they wish.

In order to rise to the top, many gamers look for ways to be different, by either acting odd and silly — think PewDiePie (Google him and you’ll see exactly what I mean), or just by being the best at a particular game. Repicky said one of the greatest fighting gamers is Dominique McLean, aka "Sonic Fox."

Repicky has just begun to get his foot in the social media door — he still has a fairly small group of followers. But he’s already figured out a way to stand out.

As a big sports fanatic and former pigskin player, Repicky wore football jerseys at tournaments. Before long, that’s what he became known for, so he adopted it and created a “name” for himself: JerseyMan55. He now owns about 35 jerseys, all adorned with his gamer tag on the back.

While Repicky is excited now that he’s helping Clean Kill with its marketing campaign, he has yet to hit one of his biggest goals so far: To make it into the top eight players at a tournament. That’s where the real money is, where gamers can bring home literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, Sonic Fox won two “Mortal Kombat” tourneys back-to-back and took home $100,000 in prize money. So far, Repicky’s best showing was tying for 65th place out of about 400 players at a Chicago competition. At Orlando, he was in the top 200 out of 400 gamers.

While Repicky would love for gaming to turn into a full-blown and full-time job, he’s not prepared — financially — to make that jump just yet.

Thus, when he’s not smashing the buttons on his specialized joystick, Repicky works for Verizon as a financial analyst in Tulsa.

To track Repicky as he continues to virtually battle his way across America, follow him on Twitter, Twitch and YouTube by searching for "JerseyMan55."

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