In recent months we’ve seen loads of great Smash Bros tournaments, with quite a few newer names rising up rankings. There’s always room for fresh talent in the game though. The FreshCut Freshmen program makes it easier than ever for players to get to majors.

The Smash Bros FreshCut Freshmen program is a community fund that’s been set up to help up and coming Smash players enter into more tournaments. The program is pushing to make the game more accessible and support fighters beyond just the best Smash Bros players already winning cash at majors. The Finalists for the first reward has just been revealed.

Source: Freshcut

Smash Bros FreshCut Freshmen

FreshCut Freshmen is a community fund that’s going to be running monthly this year. It’s going to find and elevate “heroes” of local Smash communities, players will get funds to support their travel and attendance to majors.

The system is going to fulfil a role in Smash Bros that’s a lot of esports have problems with. Support for the grassroots level is a problem in a lot of games. In fighting games like Smash without developer support, it can be even trickier. Finding the funds for emerging players to attend Majors and start making a national name for themselves is difficult. While some titles have developer ran events for online competition like Brawlhalla, Smash is dependent on players having the funds to put themselves into contention at events. This will fund will address that.

They’ll be able use the fund to pay for travel and accommodation to Majors. Alongside the financial reward, there’s promotion in this too. The program will promote all of the finals both through FreshCut’s own channels, and with a spotlight section and interview on Hungrybox’s stream.

Each month of the FreshCut Freshmen event will give another player the chance to win. There are 8 finalists each time, with 3 getting rewards at the end. We’ve already seen our FreshCut Freshmen finalists for this month.

Finalists

The FreshCut Freshmen Smash Bros round for May has already found its finalists. There are quite a few players here already. These are the finalists.

Source: Freshcut

Fans can vote for who they think should get the prize by interacting with their videos on the FreshCut app. This is a great system for supporting upcoming talent in Smash, and the kind of program for upcoming talent that some fighting games or even esports as a whole could do with right now.