Jedi Academy Aurochs

The official logo of the Jedi Academy Aurochs.

The Jedi Academy Aurochs are the official sports team of The Jedi Academy. Members from the Academy are recruited into the Aurochs to represent the community both in fighting ability and in good sportsmanship. The Aurochs compete in TFFA and Duel matches against other teams in JK3. They are one of the few competitive teams in JK3 that still adhere to a non-poke fighting style. The JAA also takes an active role in contributing back to the Academy and to the entire JK3 community. As such, the Aurochs comprise the very best of the Academy.

What is an "Aurochs"?

Cave painting of an Aurochs.

An aurochs (Bos primigenius) is an extinct European mammal of the Bovidae family. Julius Caesar wrote of the great black bulls in an account of the Black Forest..."They are but a little less than Elephants in size, and are of the species, color, and form of a bull. Their strength is very great, and also their speed. They spare neither man nor beast that they see. They cannot be brought to endure the sight of men, nor be tamed, even when taken young." The team derives its name from the Final Fantasy X team: the Besaid Aurochs. The reason why Luke Skywalker picked this name is unknown, though. The word "aurochs" is both singular and plural and can also be thought of as a collective, individuals forming a greater whole.

Origins and History

The Hydroball Team

The first Academy team to carry the name "Aurochs" was originally created by Luke Skywalker and (SKX) Dark Blade as a casual Hydroball team at the Academy. Who the original players were and how active the team was at that time is unknown today. All that is known is the team eventually fizzled out with the arrivial of JK3.

Aphex's Aurochs

Late in 2003, Aphex created the first version of the Aurochs as they are today. He invisioned a team of Academy members that could go out and compete against other clans/teams in Duels and TFFA while representing the Academy. Aphex wanted the Aurochs to spread word of the Academy to various players in JK3 that didn't know about it and needed help.

The Aurochs were an instant success in the Academy and attracted some of its best fighters. The team practiced fairly often and participated in all aspects of JKA such as no-force, full-force, capture the flag, and all-out FFA. The team took on a number of clans and participated in some tournaments. Unfortunately, the records of those matches have been lost.

Midway through 2004, Aphex joined the US Army and was unable to lead the Aurochs any more nor fulfill his duties as a Jedi Academy Knight. He turned over control of the team to Jaiko D'Kana, a JAT at the Academy. Jaiko was unable to do much for the slowly retiring team because of various issues in his life and the inability of his internet connection to join game servers. The Aurochs fell into inactivity and the team faded away once again.

The Return of the Aurochs

On October 10th, 2004, then Jedi Academy Knight Tido wrote to Jaiko to allow Janus, a former Aurochs and then a Knight, to take lead of the team and make it active again. Jaiko readily agreed and passed the responsibility to Janus. Janus laid a new foundation for the Aurochs and Tido constructed a new website to reflect the changes. The Aurochs took a design similar to the Academy's with the leader of the team being the "Master Aurochs", the leadership advisors being the "Master Auroch Mentors", the JAK+ who were involved being the "Mentors", and the rest of the team being "Aurochs". The team grew quickly by attracting many players, most notably Kain, followed shortly by Masta, both of whom would later on become some of the core players of the JAA.

Janus couldn't remain as the leader of the Aurochs because of issues in his life and eventually because the purge removed him from the title of Jedi Academy Knight making him uneligable to lead the team. Janus passed the title of Master Aurochs to 3th, padawan of Aphex and a Knight at the time. The Aurochs continued to flourish.

The Era of 3th

Not long after 3th took charge, the team realized the current system wasn't working smoothly. It became apparent that the Academy's design wasn't proper for a team and the Aurochs were suffering inactivity problems in the upper ranks just like the Academy was. Also, the Aurochs were caught in a tough debate about whether to recruit a team to win or recruit a team to allow more people to participate despite the outcome. It was believed that the team could accomplish both objectives and a dual-team system was drafted for the Aurochs. The Aurochs became two teams: the White Team and the Green Team. The White Team represented the top-skilled players and were to play against the toughest clans/teams. The Green team consisted of Aurochs that were considered "up and coming" and were to play intermediate level teams/clans. The hope was that both teams would be active, play opponets of their skill level, and the Aurochs would have a system that constantly improved players to the next level. The design worked well for the White Team and it went on to achieve some great victories in JKA. The Green Team, however, never became motivated about their matches and made little effort to improve or even participate.

Conflicts With The Academy

The Aurochs suddenly found themselves in a tough situation when teammate Sauce was suddenly banned from the Academy for making a sarcastic remark about laming on the Wovian clan's forums. Despite efforts to talk with the JAC, the Aurochs could not help their friend whose intentions were not meant to be serious. From this point on, the Aurochs and JAC had trouble getting along with one another. Situations arose where the JAC disapproved of the Aurochs. The team felt like they were being targeted and that the Academy was being hostile towards them.

The Aurochs went into debate amongst themselves about seperating from the Academy. Many felt that they were not welcome at the JA and that the Council, for whatever reasons, might destroy the team they had come to enjoy being a part of. On the other hand, most Aurochs didn't want to be a clan and liked representing the ideals and comradery they enjoy as members of the Academy. Most of the team agreed that the best course of action was to remain a part of the JA, but start preparing incase their fears about the Council were true. After this, the Aurochs began moving their website to their own domain and started acquiring their own game servers.

The Golden Age

With a renewed sense of autonomy, the Aurochs quickly became motivated enough to start working on their new vision of the team. Because of the failure of the dual-team system, a new one-team system was drafted to create the "leaner and meaner" Aurochs. The idea was to have fewer numbers but higher quality players overall. The focus was no longer to field only the best players in competition, but instead equally force everyone on the team to improve. Recruitment requirements were toughened, and it was harder to remain a member of the team if inactive. Practice schedules were drafted out and a lot of attention was put on individual player's improvement as well as tactical sophistication. The Aurochs eventually moved back to the JA's website and much of the tension between the Academy and the Aurochs had lightened due to the unbanning of Sauce and other reasons. This lead to a favourable training environment that would ultimately serve as the basis for much of the success that the team had in mid-2005 till late 2006. During this time, the Aurochs assisted with TFFA classes with the Jedi Academy, attracting new students to the TFFA gametype. The Aurochs pushed for basejka Academy servers and eventually made it happen.

At its competitive highpoint, the team won many significant victories against the very top clans of the North American JKA scene. This included most notably the infamous game against clan DoX in August 2005, which had at that time usurped the title of NA champion because of the inactivity of Wovian. DoX had fielded their very best lineup against the Aurochs, including the newly recruited dox.subLime who was widely known to be the best dual-saber user in North America, but ultimately succumbed to the JAA in two very close rounds, losing the first round 50-48 and the second 50-46 in an upsetting fashion.

Shortly thereafter the Aurochs challenged and convincingly defeated clan KoP, which had remained a significant force in the North American scene, with a score of 50-39 and 50-40 respectively. The next step was to focus more on the European JKA scene. Consequently, Master Aurochs 3th decided to sign the team up for the ESL. It took the Aurochs a while to adjust to the incredibly tough competition faced in the European league, and despite a difficult start, the Aurochs managed to bring home their first major victory in February 2006 when they defeated the then emerging North American clan SITH with a score of 43-48 and 45-33. Clan SITH would return to challenge the Aurochs once again in April 2006, fielding their best team with former Master Viper (aka SITH_Black) and Wovian Ransom (aka SITH_North). In an extremely close game the JAA managed to defeat SITH a second time, losing the first round 39-43 and winning the second one 48-38.

The team continued to actively compete against the very best clans that the European scene had to offer, playing many excellent matches against teams like BoS, Best, losing just barely to TuA, being unfortunately outplayed by the top clans noLimits and 333, but winning a close victory against a branch of the eSe clan.

Another great hallmark was reached in June 2006 when the Aurochs played a lot of top clans in quick succession, pulling some stunning victories. They first played roYality, who fielded the top player maerlin amongst others, and won two incredibly close rounds with scores of 38-35 and 43-37; then came the match against fiDelity, featuring such amazing players like reign, aoshi and noiz, against which the JAA once again only just barely won, winning the first round 64-50 and losing the second one 49-54. They defeated team Zenith, BolS, beat the B-Team of clan TuA twice, won against SITH for the third time and finally played against the clan Jedi Sentinels, which would later go on to become one of the most successful clans in the history of the ESL. For that game, clan JS had decided to field Grizzli, the legendary player Minneyar and Unique, all of which were elite players back then. Despite their lineup, they did not manage to win against the Aurochs who took the game 41-36 and 49-44. This culminated in the team reaching rank #3 in the ESL team ladder.

Towards the end of June 2006, the Aurochs decided to challenge team aXiom in the ESL and despite their best efforts, they could only win the first round with a score of 57-53, losing the other one 19-33. They also decided to challenge Wovian to an official match, but that match never came to fruition due to the inactivity on part of team Wovian.

Decline and Retirement

Unfortunately, inactivity became a serious problem from that point on. Many of the Aurochs got more and more preoccupied by issues external to the game, some became slightly complacent after having achieved so much and others were becoming disillusioned with the most recent defeats in the ESL and with Wovian declining the JAA's open challenge. In an attempt to counteract this development, a new training system was implemented while the team took a break from competitive gaming. The training system was established and conducted; however, as previously mentioned, the timing was not the best. The Aurochs were slowly losing more and more members to inactivity, and thus the training sessions only had a handful of Aurochs present. Eventually, the training sessions were abandoned altogether.

During this time, the Aurochs were having troubles with the JAC once again. Projects undertaken for the good of the Academy, which to the JAC however seemed to overstep the bounds of the role that the "JA's football team" is supposed to play, strained the relationship of the Aurochs and the Academy. Both sides misunderstood one another, not willing to look at the other's point of view, making it very hard to come up with a concrete solution to the problem. Eventually, these projects were abandoned, and problems that arose on IRC were mostly resolved. There was still a lot of tension present, which made the JAA's situation all the more difficult.

After a couple of months, the Aurochs noticed how inactive they had become. Due to real life circumstances, college, jobs, and other factors, the majority of the Aurochs were not able to maintain a decent level of activity in-game anymore. Some felt discouraged with the constant conflicts with the JAC and considered quitting the team altogether, some others tried to give the team another wake-up call, hoping to restore it to its former glory. However, This wake-up call was not successful. The Aurochs could not maintain the level of excellence they previously had. They had only participated in 2 matches ever since they left the ESL. The majority of the team finally agreed it was time for the Aurochs to retire. The team planned on going out strong, hoping to leave an Auroch legacy that someone would pick up later in the JA.

When it was revealed that the Aurochs were retiring, the JAC explicitly stated that the team could not retire, but individuals could. This statement dissolved the Aurochs arranged plan to retire together after one last meeting. One by one, Auroch members stated they were retiring individually from JKA. Tido cleaned up the forums and handed over access to R2D2 and 3th, who was not present due to real life problems. The Aurochs beloved bot, b00m, run by Tido, became one with the Force shortly after this happened. The team was left with only two of its members, R2D2 and Jade Jedi.

The greatest era of the Aurochs thus far was finished.

A New Dawn: R2D2 and Jade Jedi

R2D2 and Jade Jedi, were the only Aurochs to stay after the mass exodus towards the end of 2006. They have both committed themselves to rebuilding the Aurochs and to recruit new members as to generate more interest within The Jedi Academy and the Aurochs.

R2D2 became the new Team Manager/Master Auroch after 3th, while Jade Jedi took on the role of trying to fill the shoes of Tido as the new Team Captain.

Shortly after, Piccolo and Wicek joined the team on completion of their trial and the re-building process had begun. Around the same time the Aurochs CTF squad was implemented and saw the return of Rosered to take the reigns of CTF Captain.

The Aurochs are looking forward to continuing the rebuilding process in 2007 and to start competing again in an attempt to regain some of their former glory within the JA community and the ESL.

Roster

Team Manager/Master Auroch- Fullmetal and Masta

TFFA Captain - Vision

TFFA Match Coordinator - Komence

TFFA Recruit Lead - Piccolo

TFFA Training Leads - Gil/Kain

CTF Captain - Fullmetal

TFFA Squad Aurochs:

Name Number Location

Khako #02 United States

Anubis #03 United Kingdom

Kain #07 United Kingdom

Trey #09 Romania

Vision #10 Slovenia

R2D2 #11 United States

Botik #13 Czech Republic

Piccolo #14 Romania

Lok #23 Sweden

Timoti #31 Czech Republic

Mystik #54 United States

Komence #61 United States

Retired: 3th Aiden D'Kana Aphex Artex Ash Carda Jowol Dane ĐarK D@RTHM@UL Deqlyn Eclipse EJ_Will Elminster Evenue FaDed Gil-Galad Hitman Jacen Aratan Jade Jedi Jaiko D'Kana Jake Kainite Janus Jedi Prodigy JKXIII Ken Lancer007 Leif Loto Luke Skywalker Masta Minneyar Moridin MOTREC n00b Ninja! Oberon Optime ozzcoz Proximo QuietGuardian Refl3x Rosered Sam Sauce Setementor Sfire ShadowSith (SKX) Dark Blade Sneezilla Tido thewind Ven Viper Vladarion Wicek Wolfwood YinYang Xipkell