Junior Nick Crump’s unique hobby allows him to be part of a diverse, tight-knit online community, as he dedicates countless hours to improving his speedrunning skills.

Speedrunning is when a gamer records themselves going through a video game as fast as possible using anything they can, including glitches and exploits. Gamers then upload that video to one of the speedrunning communities or leaderboards, where their video will compete with others. Many communities will even host a speedrunning tournament.

In the time Crump has been speedrunning, he has competed for a high ranking on many of these leaderboards.

“The specific game that I put the most time into is ‘Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom,’ which sounds like a joke but it’s actually a very in-depth and complex run. There was a point where there were about 120 people for the standard completion called ‘Any Percent’ and I was ranked 12th,” Crump said.

Through Crump’s experience in online competitions, he has gained a large amount of completed runs through multiple games. In ‘Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom’ Crump has completed 39 runs. Overall, he has completed a total of 100 runs. Crump has committed many hours to speedrunning in order to reach the positions he has on the leaderboards.

“To get to top 20 I probably spent more time on that one game than I have ever spent on any game I have ever played. It takes a lot of practice and skill,” Crump said.

Although speedrunning can be very time-consuming, Crump enjoys many things about it, including the abundance of support in the community aspect.

“I would say the biggest part that I enjoy is basically being part of an online community of tons of different people who all just work together purely to see if there is anything new we can discover for this game to make it faster,” Crump said. “Working with other people to make something even better than it already is.”

Not only has Crump found a love for speedrunning, but he also believes that he has learned a valuable life lesson from it.

“I would say the biggest thing I have learned from this is to never be afraid to try something out of the ordinary. What I’m trying to say is do not settle with stagnation always try to push something further and improve it,” Crump said. “Never settle with repetition.”