One mom’s journey to love everyone pays off in a big way.

Photo credit Vanessa Kerr

In 2008, the Pew Research Center reported that while parents know that their kids play video games, and sometimes they know what games, only 2% of the parents surveyed said they would actually play games with their child. Comparing this to something as simple as playing catch in the yard or teaching their kids how to ride a bike, gaming is an activity that most parents just don’t understand. While that percentage of parents might be on the rise due to Millennials having children, parents are still less engaged in learning and playing video games with their kids as they are with traditional sports or everyday life events.

So when Vanessa Kerr of San Antonio, Texas joined her then 12-year-old son at his first Super Smash Brothers local event, she was practically one of the only parents there. “Occasionally I would see a couple (parents) come in and not really watch or pay attention. But for the most part, I would be the only parent there,” said Kerr.

Vanessa and her husband both grew up around video games, and they introduced gaming to both of their sons at a young age, wanting them to enjoy the classics. So, it was no surprise when Vanessa’s younger son, Brandon, who goes by ToasT in the community, showed interest in Super Smash Brothers, a fighting game created by Nintendo whose characters revolve around prior Nintendo based titles and other classic video games. “He got Smash Bros around the age of 11 or 12, and then somehow he heard that there were such things as tournaments that you could go to,” said Kerr when speaking about her son’s first tournaments. “We found a place in San Antonio called Otaku Café that held weekly tournaments every Thursday evening, and we never looked back.”

Over time, as her son would go to more regional based tournaments, she did find more parents who would come to support their kids and struck up a friendship with a few dads of some other players across the region. But because she was a major presence at just about every event her son would go to, a lot of the players, young and even adult age, started to consider her their Smash mom. “They would just come up and start talking to me at the tournaments,” Kerr lamented, “whether it would be about ToasT or something else, school whatever, they would talk to me because they were like ‘wow, I wish my mom would support me in the way that you’re supporting ToasT.”

Dylan Odenkirk, a Smash Brothers competitor, originally saw Vanessa’s Twitter content and was impressed by her positivity, which can sometimes be lacking in the gaming community. The two met for the first time at the 2023 Texas Reverie tournament, where they bonded over cleaning the house that her and some other players were staying in. Texas Reverie is an invitational tournament where the top 16 players stay in a house to compete through the weekend. While Odenkirk was helping to clean the house to feel clean, she said that Kerr was cleaning to allow the players to feel comfortable and taken care of in a place that normally wasn’t their home and allowing the staff to conduct their jobs to run the event with ease.

Odenkirk says she was impressed with how Kerr places such an emphasis on making sure the players feel accepted in the community, both in person and online. “Because esports is still newish, Vanessa approaches these topics assuming that lots of parents aren’t in full support of esports professionally or casually as a high school or college hobby”.

Back in the fall of 2022, Vanessa found herself struggling with a non-stop battle with her health. The bills were piling, the answers weren’t coming, and she even had to resign from her job, which made things harder on the family. That’s when one of the local Smash players named Garrett, who goes by GMeister in the community, approached her and asked how she felt about hosting a tournament to help raise money for her medical bills. “I was very taken back by this because Garrett is just 19 years old. So for somebody that age to come up with that thought laid on his heart was just really amazing,” Kerr said.

The tournament, which started out as just an idea to host some players in Kerr’s basement, turned into a huge event that included vendors, a full production team, and even a food truck, where most or all of the proceeds of the sales went to the fundraiser totals.  

Odenkirk says that she knew that hitting the goal for Vanessa would be an easy task. “Vanessa is such an integral part of the Texas Smash community, I knew she would have support,” Odenkirk states, “so much so that when a volunteer suggested we set our goal for $1500, I encouraged us to push it to at least $2500.”

The tournament became so big that it was considered a Regional event. In the end, they raised enough money, close to $3,500, to allow Kerr to pay off a significant amount of her medical bills. “My heart was overflowing with gratitude to these kids that came out to do this and we had a great time and they said ‘we’re here for you,’” Kerr said with a smile. “It made my year for sure.”

For parents who are still afraid of the unknown of gaming, Kerr says that you don’t have to understand it to be supportive. Even his grandparents loved to hear about how Brandon did in his tournaments. Kerr says “if it’s making them happy, and they’re around people and having a good time, then that’s what matters, right? Bringing them joy.” Kerr says that it’s not just a video game, it’s a community of people that can create life-long friendships, and her event is the proof of that.

In the early days of the weekly tournaments, Brandon said to his mom “these are my people.” For Kerr, being around this community of gamers has allowed her to find her people too.

Odenkirk agrees, reinforcing just how much Kerr means to the community. “I’m privileged to have met her and work alongside her, and I am positive this era of Smash players have each been influenced by her in a positive way.”

For parents who are looking for a resource to help guide them through their child’s gaming, please visit the Coalition of Parents in Esports, also known as C.O.P.E. You can also follow along with Kerr and her son’s journey through her Twitter, MommaToaster.