Sean Stackhouse '06
Photo courtesy of the @ZeeboDesigns
With a storied career across the state in traditional athletics and across the globe in Rocket League, we sat down with Stackhouse to learn more about how he’s bringing his talents to the new and accomplished eSports program at MCI.
Growing up in a small town like Pittsfield and its surrounding communities, there are some people, places, and things that will forever be associated with our quaint, central Maine town. There’s the way the sun rises over the fog of Manson Park in the early morning, or the way that the summer brings in a new energy for families and individuals to enjoy the atmosphere of this charming little community.
When it comes to sports, there is one singular voice that bellows across the football fields on a brisk Friday night or booms at any local event he participates in: the voice of Sean Stackhouse ’06. Whether you know his story or not, you know his voice; a voice that is well known in the state of Maine when it comes to traditional athletics, but is even more renowned across the country and world through the growing industry of eSports. From humble beginnings at MCI’s broadcast station, to emerging as a premier announcing talent for Maine athletics, and now as a staple of the Rocket League community, we sat down with Stackhouse to learn more about his storied career so far and how he’s bringing his talents to the new and accomplished eSports program at MCI.
Stackhouse’s history with MCI during his time here is anything but normal. School was overbearing for him during his childhood, and he ended up dropping out of MCI before becoming one of the first students to go through the Alternative Education program in town, earning his MCI diploma in 2006. While the work was challenging, Stackhouse is proud of his excellence in the program and would later become the first person to go through the Alternative Education program and earn their college degree.
While at MCI, Stackhouse remembers checking out two books from the library: And The Crowd Goes Wild and And The Fans Roared, both written by Joe Garner and accompanied by CD’s narrated by Bob Costas giving the background behind some of the greatest moments in sports history and the calls behind them. It was at this moment that Stackhouse knew what he wanted to do with his life.
“There’s just something about hearing the crowd go nuts that is just a rush of adrenaline for me… I live for that,” said Stackhouse. “More than the calls themselves, you hear the excitement of the crowd and the calls are attached to that...the commentators become part of that moment.”
At the time that Stackhouse made this realization, Maine Central Institute boasted a unique program ripe for his announcing aspirations: the WMCI broadcast station. Officially on the air starting in 2003, WMCI was featured on Channel 7 of Adelphia’s broadcast programming and featured content curated by students in broadcast and production classes taught and supervised by KJ Flewelling. Flewelling’s first gig for Stackhouse was providing commentary over a golf highlight package, which transitioned to commentating boys/girls soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball/tennis in the spring. Stackhouse loved every minute of it.
With a career trajectory set, it was only up from there. After graduating from NESCOM in 2010 with a concentration in Sports Broadcast Journalism, Stackhouse began to PA for programs like John Bapst baseball, which led to gigs with Old Town coach David Utterback, who was the head of the Maine Baseball Coaches Association. From there it continued to snowball, as Stackhouse’s first large gig at the Senior All Star Game in Orono led him to get picked up for the University of Maine’s baseball games and soon he became a regular for soccer, women’s hockey, and basketball.
MCI’s State Champion eSports team for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, from left to right: Head Coach Sean Stackhouse ’06, Tyson Thompson ’26, Lucius Tran ’23, Evan Rowell ’23 and Scott Martin ’26.
Stackhouse’s voice and work spoke for itself, once you heard him you knew you needed him for your team. “It was literally just networking from there... passive networking too, its not like I was actively reaching out to people,” explained Stackhouse. “I knew the right guy at the right time and was in the right place at the right time.”
While Stackhouse’s voice was a familiar one when it came to Maine sports, that was far from the peak of where his talents would take him. In 2015, a video game entitled Rocket League was released on major platforms, where players control rocket-powered cars in a game of soccer to see which team can score the most goals and come out victorious. At this point Stackhouse’s love for video games and passion for commentating had never converged, but something about this new game lit a spark and offered a new challenge.
“There was one tournament organization in particular I was watching because they did a lot of events, and I’m listening to their commentators and I’m thinking…. I can do better than this,” said Stackhouse. After recording a demo, “Stax” made it into the rotation at their weekly tournament series, eventually worked his first in-person Rocket League event at the Dallas Open in Fall of 2017, and then in Spring of 2018 gets the call from Cory Lanier, eSports Product Manager at Psyonix (Rocket League’s publisher) to see if he’d be interested in joining their Rivals series. The rest is history.
The Rivals series saw Stackhouse traveling to Burbank, California on Thursdays, completing shows on Friday mornings and afternoons, and then flying home on Saturdays. This went on for five weeks at a time every six months or so, from 2018 all the way until 2020. It was a grueling schedule, but it got Stackhouse’s talents closer to the mainstream where his fanbase grew and grew. From there, Stackhouse’s involvement in the Rocket League Championship Series has been pivotal and celebrated, as his boisterous voice and personality have introduced players to crowds of fans and given great vibrance and energy to the games and commentary of this particular eSports scene.
While Stackhouse still travels the globe whenever he is needed, his focus has also shifted back to Pittsfield and MCI, which has and will always be the root of his career in announcing and commentating. Stackhouse is no stranger to giving back, as he has always been involved in the youth athletic programs in the area, serving as Assistant Rec Director for ten years between 2010 and 2020. With a newfound passion and knowledge for eSports, Stackhouse has dedicated his time and resources towards the newly created and flourishing eSports program at MCI.
Beginning in 2020, the Maine Principal’s Association began sanctioning eSports and Rocket League as a State league, and MCI came in on the ground floor. Stackhouse has not only donated his valuable time and effort to build out the program to numerous other games, but also donated numerous PC’s, monitors, gaming consoles, and other equipment so MCI students can compete at the highest level. This dedication paid off with a huge victory this past Fall, when the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate team won the first in-person State Championship in the history of Maine competition. With such an amazing feat in their first years and the Rocket League team reaching the State Championship as well this past Spring, one can only imagine what this program will achieve in the years and decades to come.
“The industry itself has changed my life tremendously… now I get to give back to the community,” explained Stackhouse. “Being able to do something that feels worthwhile that has an effect on others is a great feeling for me personally, there’s people I’m accountable for now and I have to do right by them, just being able to bring all these people on this journey with me is just a ton of fun.”