Blake “Ulti” Griesbauer explains how his early love of games has impacted his current gameplay and coaching styles.

Published: Oct. 12, 2021

By: Lydia Donaldson

Blake “Ulti” Griesbauer has been a coach for the Mizzou Rocket League team since October 2020. Griesbauer has led the team to success this season already, beating Northwood University 3-1 on September 29. On October 6, Mizzou beat the University of Hartford’s Rocket League team 3-1 as well. “We have momentum, we’re coming into this scene,” says Griesbauer. 

Griesbauer loves improving both himself and everyone he coaches. “The collegiate scene is so adaptable. Depending on how well you do as a team with these tournaments basically molds your future,” said Griesbauer. 

In 2016, Griesbauer created a Discord server to coach Rocket League players. The server reached about 200 members and Griesbauer coached whoever wanted it for free. “It was just me coaching at the time. It got to the point where I was getting overloaded because everyone wanted coaching all the time because it was free, 100% free,” says Griesbauer. 

Griesbauer has been gaming since the first consoles came out, including the Atari Sega, Playstation One, and Nintendo 64. His favorite game of all time, however, is Ace Combat 5, a flight simulation.  “It’s taught me how to be fast, agile, precise, and it’s such a good story line that you can’t pass it up,” said Griesbauer. He thinks that the love of fast-paced gameplay and precision ties into his love of Rocket League and his style of coaching. “I think it helped connect the dots about spatial awareness. It helped me get an idea for how much distance is between each play, calculating timing, [and] how long it takes for the ball to get to a certain point,” says Griesbauer.