[2019] I married a girl that I met on Rocket League (and you have to see the cake!)

Buckle up, it's story time.

Three and a half years ago (October 3rd, 2015, to be exact), I was having a miserable day on Rocket League. Loss after loss on my usual Doubles/Standard play left me in a hopeless state, so I decided to try Solo Duel for the first time, since I figured things couldn't get any worse.

I end up getting matched against a player named onomatopoeia1337, who, after the first two minutes was clobbering me 4-0. With my morale at such a low point, I normally would've left the game. I was in a rare mood however, and decided to stick out the rest of the match...although, rather than playing normally, I decided to goof off by scoring on myself, chasing my opponent’s car rather than the ball, as well as "turtling" around the field for fun.

Soon enough, my opponent joined me in my “tactical” game play and we spent the remainder of the match playing around with one another. Once the match ended, I got an in-game message from them saying: "I like you. Let's team up!". We then joined forces, winning game after game (which was a nice change of pace for me), until we entered a fateful match.

One thing I can say is that I never considered myself a "pro" at the game by any stretch, and yet in this specific match, it felt like my teammate and I were playing like Grand Champions. The score of the match ended up being somewhere around 8-0 for us, and I was riding a nice Rocket League high. It was then that I received a voice chat invite from one of our opponents. I'm normally not the kind of person to accept invites like this as I don't care much to be verbally berated over a video game, but I genuinely wanted to hear what this person had to say.

I join the chat along with my teammate, only to hear this man go off on us for "playing unfair", to "play him again when we get good", and other comically unsubstantiated remarks. His frustrations went on for a couple minutes before he stormed off, and I was left alone with my teammate who was giggling in the background. I thought to myself, "this laugh has got to belong to a girl, or a young boy..." Now I obviously assumed it was the latter, so I had to ask. Sure enough, I had been playing with a girl the entire time. Needless to say, I was surprised. Not only is it rare to find a girl online in this manner, but to find one that was outright better than me at the game? I couldn’t believe it.

We played a few more matches together while remaining in the voice chat and started to get to know one another. Her name was Sara, a 21-year-old southern girl from Louisiana; I was a 22-year-old Canadian boy from Ontario, and we couldn't possibly have clicked any better than we did. We had the same sense of humor, similar tastes in music, alike personalities, and soon enough we were talking like we’d known each other for years. We made sure to schedule more Rocket League meetups over the next week, and eventually exchanged each other’s information to add each other on social media.

We began to talk with each other every day over the next few months, becoming more and more inseparable (well, as inseparable as two could be from a couple thousand miles away). There was no doubt that there were strong feelings developing between us, despite the distance. I had only told my sister and a couple friends about the relationship we had, trying to avoid telling my parents about it to save myself from the assumed conversation about me being crazy for falling for a southern girl I met over a video game... Either way, the information had to come out sooner or later, as we were planning to meet each other sometime in the new year.

On the morning of January 1st, my friends and I were heading back home from a New Year’s party when we were involved in a serious car accident; one that had me put into a medically induced coma. The rest of my friends were relatively okay, thankfully, as my seating behind the driver is what took most of the impact. It was during this time that my friends came out and told the rest of my family and friends about my relationship with Sara, since they knew what we had was real and had to figure out a way to tell her about the terrible news.

I spent two weeks in the coma, and it was still a another few days before I was finally thinking straight. I was greeted by my loved ones who supported me through this difficult time, and it wasn’t long before Sara’s name was being thrown around. To my surprise, my parents were completely okay with the news of our relationship, and they encouraged me to meet her once I was healthy again.

It wasn’t until I left the hospital at the end of January to enter rehab that I managed to get my phone back so that I could reconnect with her (I was actually expected to be in the hospital for over two months, so I’m convinced that my body kicked it into overdrive just so I could talk to Sara again). The first contact I had with her brought me to tears, and I’m sure it did for her as well. She told me that she felt like she lost a piece of her when she heard the news, and that she prayed every day for my recovery. It was in that moment that I knew that I had to see things through with her.

Through the arduous year of physical therapy, she stayed by my side (figuratively, of course). I had some physical disabilities that made it difficult to play Rocket League to my usual standard, but it didn’t stop us from continuing our routine “date nights” together. I slowly got my life back on track, and eventually planned a trip in April 2017 to finally meet Sara. I have to give credit to my parents; due to my lingering problems, I was unable to travel by plane, so they offered to drive me down there to meet her while they would go on a vacation of their own (they're awesome, I know).

On April 22nd, 2017, after a long drive, I finally got to meet her

…and she was more amazing in person than I could’ve imagined. There was hardly a moment of awkwardness between us, and it was clear that our chemistry was just as strong (if not stronger) in person. We had two wonderful weeks together before we had to part, but it wouldn’t be long before I would see her again. Being a teacher, Sara has summers off, so she was able to fly up north to spend those months up in Canada with me. Following that, since I had another year of college left, I would spend my breaks in Louisiana. All things considered; we’ve been pretty lucky to spend as much time together as we have.

On one of her many subsequent trips up north, I popped the question. Spoilers: she said yes! We shared our story with the awesome team at Psyonix after our engagement, and they surprised us with these hilariously clever player titles

! We've shared our story to many curious players in-game: most of them gave us best wishes and congrats (which always put a smile on our faces), some called us gay (...?), and the rest simply didn't believe us, which we couldn't really blame..

Fast forward to today, Sara and I are married

. As a part of our wedding we had this amazing groom's cake

made for us, topped with some handmade models of our in-game cars

, courtesy of Sara's (very talented) best friend!

The fact that I managed to find my soulmate over a game of Rocket League is unbelievable. Not only that, but if it weren’t for me goofing off in that Solo match rather than quit, or for her sending me that message to team up afterwards, or for that opponent to send us the angry voice chat invite which got us talking in the first place, we probably never would have spoken to each other. There were so many unlikely factors in play that we truly feel like the stars aligned to bring us together, and it’s all thanks to this game. Sara has turned what should’ve been some of the worst years of my life into the best. We can’t thank Pysonix enough for being a part in bringing the two of us together, and for helping us feel so close to each other from so far away.

Thanks for reading :)

TL;DR - Got my ass handed to me by some random girl on Rocket League, married her 4 years later.

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