Anyone who has stepped foot into the world of Pokémon has dreamed of becoming a Pokémon master. But what many die-hard fans of the franchise may not know is that one of the greatest competitive Pokémon players of all time once walked the halls of McLean.
Wolfe Glick, who graduated from McLean in 2014, has held a decade-long dominance over the Pokémon Video Game Championships (VGC). Most notably, he won the 2016 Pokémon World Championships, as well as two international, two national and 10 regional titles—the most of any player in the game’s history.
“I firmly believe Wolfe is the greatest of all time, and no one’s surpassing him any time soon,” sophomore Ivan Nguyen said.
Glick made his debut at the 2011 Pokémon D.C. Regional Championships during his freshman year at McLean.
“I’d been playing the video game just for my own enjoyment, but when I heard there was going to be a tournament in Chantilly, I thought I’d go for fun since it was close by,” Glick said. “I ended up winning the whole thing, and it kicked off my competitive journey because the prize was a flight to the national championship.”
Despite being new to the scene, Glick won the U.S. nationals and placed fifth at the world championship in San Diego, cementing himself as the game’s top prodigy.
“There’s a whole section of the game called team building where you choose which Pokémon you bring into the match and [determine] how you train them—this makes up a huge percentage of whether or not someone is successful,” Glick said. “It was a year where everybody thought there were only five good teams, but my team didn’t fall under that category. So I had an inherent advantage because people didn’t know what to do against my team, whereas I had experience against theirs.”
Outside of Pokémon, Glick served as the president of the men’s choir and the McLean Madrigals.
“He was an absolutely talented singer, and he was able to be more expressive in his singing as he got more mature,” chorus teacher Linda Martin said. “He was always very charismatic and analytical with the way he approached things, which is easy to see in his new career path.”
Even though Glick was the best player in the country, he kept his competitive career a secret from his classmates.
“I was quite insecure about the fact that I was spending so much time playing this video game,” Glick said. “The scene on the whole was minuscule—there were maybe 300 people who played globally.”
Glick dominated tournament after tournament for the rest of high school, qualifying for worlds every year. He continued to compete even when he began attending Virginia Tech in 2014, though the world title remained just out of reach.
“When I got second at the world championships in 2012, I felt like it was only a matter of time until I’d win,” Glick said. “The reality was that I took the wrong lessons from getting second. I thought that I’d been doing well for reasons that weren’t actually true, and I built a lot of bad habits that would take years to unlearn.”
Leading up to 2016, six Pokémon ruled the VGC stage. Consisting of Primal Groudon, Xerneas, Mega Kangaskhan, Talonflame, Mega Salamence and Smeargle, the “Big 6” was a dominating force that Glick struggled to defeat all season.
“Despite people thinking whoever was the luckiest or the best pilot of the team would win, my friends and I still tried to find a way to take them down,” Glick said. “We came up with really interesting combinations of Pokémon and strategies that hadn’t been explored beforehand.”
Glick’s unconventional team consisted of Mega Rayquaza, Primal Kyogre, Mega Gengar, Hitmontop, Bronzong and Raichu.
“My favorite team I ever created was the team that I won worlds with,” Glick said. “[My friends and I] were able to build a flow chart where, no matter what the opponent did, we would always come out on top.”
Following an impressive 6-1 preliminary record in the 2016 Pokémon VGC, Glick proceeded to the elimination bracket as the fifth seed. Glick tore through the competition, even defeating his friend, Markus Hamaan from Germany, with the same exact team matchup in the semifinals.
The final team Glick faced was one he never expected. Jonathan Evans’ team was extremely similar to Glick’s, picking up a Mega Manectric and Talonflame instead of a Hitmontop and Raichu.
“I remember looking down after I won the first game [against Evans], and my hands were shaking really bad,” Glick said. “I was really nervous, but I had a plan that I felt good about. I just tried to focus on doing my best.”
Glick ended up taking the final round in a resounding 2-0 sweep. As the crowd erupted, and the spotlight shone on the stage, Glick was crowned the 2016 world champion.
“It was just so many feelings all at once, but the biggest thing I felt was relief,” Glick said. “I had hoped and dreamed [of this], and I’d gotten close before and fallen short—I was relieved I’d finally managed to do it.”
After winning the world title, Glick began to devote more time to content creation while balancing his competitive career with a full-time job as a consultant for Accenture.
“I really enjoy the self-expression aspect of making videos,” Glick said. “I’m not the best writer, [but] I’ve gotten a lot better, largely because of working on my videos. It’s really meaningful to think about all the different ways I can express the concepts that I want to convey and find new ways of making mundane [things] feel more special and more remarkable.”
In late 2019, Glick’s YouTube channel, WolfeyVGC, began to surge in popularity. Glick was met with a hard decision: continue his stable career in consulting or risk it all to fully commit to his passion.
“I never intended to do Pokémon full- time. In fact, it was actually something that I intentionally didn’t consider because it was risky,” Glick said. “However, after working for about a year, I really wasn’t happy at the company I worked for. I was looking for other opportunities, and around the same time, my channel started getting bigger.”
Glick now covers a wide variety of Pokémon content, ranging from documenting VGC history to sharing detailed breakdowns of his tournament experiences. His videos introduce millions of fans worldwide to the Pokémon franchise and its competitive scene.
“He’s definitely created more popularity in the VGC [scene] and somewhat [also in] Pokémon in general,” senior Zach Sutanto said. “He’s a very strong idol to look up to, especially with how hard he works and how in-depth he plays the game.”
As of now, Glick sits at over 2.1 million subscribers and nearly 800 million views on YouTube, the most out of any Pokémon content creator on the platform. The legacy he leaves behind reflects the very reason Glick started to play competitive Pokémon in the first place: his love for the game.
“At this point, I probably am the best player of all time, but I also don’t think it really matters that much,” Glick said. “I don’t play to cement the fact that I’m the best—I just play because I enjoy it. I would rather be remembered as someone kind and respectful who was a good representative of the [Pokémon VGC] scene.”
