Huddersfield boy, 12, 'nervous' ahead of Pokémon championships
Isaac said he started playing the game after his aunt bought him a starter pack for Christmas.He enjoyed it so much that he joined the local Pokémon League club at a gaming shop in Huddersfield where he "battles" every Monday.The trading card game sees two players build 60 card decks and battle each other using their card's different effects and attacks. The first player who knocks out all their opponent's Pokémon wins.
Kenny said: "It's brought him out of his shell. He's usually a quiet individual, but when he goes to these events he's very sociable."His schoolwork has massively improved too, especially maths, which has been great to see."Isaac said that as well as helping him in the classroom and socialising, playing the card game had also got him out of the house and away from the TV screen."My XBox has been gathering dust in my bedroom and I rarely use it now", he explained."I do feel like playing it has been great for my mental health and meant I'm not spending as much time in my room."Stephen Keenan, from Gemini Games, where Isaac plays in the league every week, said he was thrilled to have a potential world champion as a customer."He's done such a good job, and to represent the store and Huddersfield in such a competitive game is amazing," he said.
In Anaheim, Isaac will have to beat 75 competitors from around the world to be crowned Pokémon Champion.In recent years, the franchise has seen a boost in popularity in the UK since it was first introduced in the 1990s.It has now grown into one of the biggest in the world covering games, films, toys and TV.At this year's European Championship in London, over 5,000 competitors took part.
Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
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'He was there the whole day trying to get an animal service, like, company to come and pick up the dog and try to get him food and was spending his whole day just trying to take care of this dog that was almost gonna bite him. 'But he's like that all the time. He just has a really big heart,' she said. Their passion for animal rights also prompted them to both leave a hotel they had been set up in after discovering it had been decorated with taxidermy. 'I was in Spokane, Washington on a film set. The hotel that we had, me and Casey, we had to move because the hotel had stuffed animal heads, like, all over the place and like furs, real furs on the floor,' she said. 'And there's something energetically that I just I pick up from like a fur that's real, it kinda creeps me out. It actually kinda grosses me out. But I don't know if that's just because like, I'm not sure exactly why that I have that feeling, but it feels like there's an energy to something that I can pick up on.' Casey says balancing their busy lifestyles with their relationship is 'pretty easy.' 'We have a mutual understanding because we're like both actors,' she said. Caylee - whose credits include Frank and Penelope and The Instigators, a 2024 film starring her boyfriend and Matt Damon - will soon be appearing in another film, Hollywood Grit. And she also is putting on a traffic-stopping display in Los Angeles, where she appears on a new billboard promoting PETA's vegan leather campaign. The billboard, located by West Hollywood on Beverly Boulevard in between Harper and North Sweetzer avenues, sees Caylee clad in an opulent red floral gown as she sits beneath a tree adorned with red purses. She holds a juicy red apple in hand with a cow by her side. In a whimsical video done for the campaign, Caylee describes how fruit and plants can be transformed into faux leather. The concept for the video, Caylee believes, was inspired by the 'magic' of turning food into fashion. 'It feels like magical, like a magic trick to make a bag from an apple, but it's not that complicated,' she told Daily Mail. 'If it can be popularized in fashion, then it would make a huge difference on not only the environment, but for cows and farming,' she said. 'It is kind of magical, isn't it?'
