MEWC
FMWC
TAC
EEO
introduction:
Alyssia Menezes has been a fan of Microsoft Excel for as long as she can remember. Not in the way most people tolerate it as a necessary work tool, but genuinely, enthusiastically, in the way some people feel about a favorite hobby.
So, when her professor Clint Tuttle showed her class a hype video for competitive Excel Esports, her reaction was not confusion or skepticism. It was immediate and total.
She was sold.
What followed was a journey that made her president of University of Texas Austin’s competitive Excel team, becoming an international athlete, and the subject of a Washington Post feature. And it started with a professor, a video, and a student who was already exactly the kind of person Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge was built for.
A professor, a video and zero convincing needed
Alyssia did not go looking for MECC. It found her in a business analytics class taught by Professor Clint Tuttle, who is deeply active in the competitive Excel space and knew exactly how to introduce it to students.
“He showed us one of the hype up Excel Esports videos and I was totally sold.”
That was it. No further persuasion required. For a student who had always loved Excel and had never considered that it could be a sport, watching that video was the moment everything clicked. The competitive element, the community, the arena, the sheer unexpectedness of it all. Alyssia was already the right person for MECC. She just needed someone to show her it existed.
a fan of excel with one advanced function
Before MECC, Alyssia’s relationship with Excel was enthusiastic but self-contained. She used it constantly, loved it genuinely, and had built a real affinity for the tool.
But in terms of advanced functions? Her ceiling was =COUNTIF().
“I’ve always been a fan of Microsoft Excel however before joining MECC I would say the most advanced function that I’d use in Excel is =COUNTIF() so I can’t say I was using it for anything that fancy.”
It is one of the most honest and relatable starting points in the MECC community. Here is someone who loves Excel, who would become president of a competitive Excel team, who would go on to represent her university internationally, and whose most advanced function before any of that was a basic conditional count. If her story proves anything, it is that passion and willingness to learn matter far more than where you start.
*Image courtesy of Alyssia Menezes*
gUErilla style, lambdas, and movie nights
Ask Alyssia about her preparation approach and the answer is as warm and team focused as every other part of her MECC story.
The team at University of Texas Austin practices by working through cases individually before coming together to compare solutions. It is in those comparisons that the real learning happens. Different approaches to the same problem reveal things no tutorial ever could.
“One team member of mine, Jaden, will usually solve things with a lot of LAMBDAS, fitting a lot of information into one cell, whereas I would say my style of solving is more like a guerilla style, for lack of a better way of saying it.”
Guerilla style. It is possibly the most memorable self-description of an Excel competition approach in MECC history. Direct, bold, effective.
The team also maintains a shared LAMBDA file that they review together to stay across everything it contains. And when the cases are done, Alyssia organizes movie nights. Because for her, a team that is close outside of competition is a team that performs better inside it.
The – means the student competed in both levels and scored above the Varsity median, so their Junior Varsity result is not shown.
walking into the hyperx arena for the first time
Alyssia’s first MECC competition was a Weekend Battle in September 2025, a 30-minute online case completed from her own screen. A quiet, low-pressure entry point into a world she had no idea would lead her somewhere like this.
That somewhere turned out to be the 2025 MECC Team & Individual Championships, where she competed in the semi-finals both individually and on behalf of UT Austin. The setting was the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas.
Nothing could have fully prepared her for what she walked into.
“I just remember walking into the HyperX Arena and everything was lit up, there was a green carpet, there were people with nicknames like the Annihilator or the LeBron James of Excel, and the announcers were giving American Ninja Warrior announcer energy. It was just so cool.”
For someone who had only ever used Excel in classrooms and for personal projects, that moment of stepping into an arena built around the tool she had always loved was something that words only partially capture. The green carpet. The nicknames. The energy. It was the moment competitive Excel stopped being a concept and became something she was actually standing inside.
*Image courtesy of Alyssia Menezes*
the excel parade down the las vegas strip
Of everything Alyssia has done through MECC, one moment stands entirely in a category of its own. Not a competition result or a personal best, but a parade.
During last year’s MECC Team & Individual Championships, her team marched down the Las Vegas Strip holding signs bearing slogans like “Power to the Pivot Tables” and “Make Sheets Not War” while coming up with Excel-themed chants as they went.
Alyssia, who had previously appeared on a game show filmed in Las Vegas, is clear about where this ranks.
“Despite that, I think this was still the craziest thing that I have done in Las Vegas.”
A game show lost to an Excel parade down the Strip. That is the kind of sentence that only exists in the MECC community.
what mecc changed and what it gave her
Here is something unexpected about competing at the highest level in any field. Sometimes getting better makes you feel less confident, not more. Because the better you get, the more clearly you can see how far there is still to go.
Alyssia knows this feeling well.
“Competing in MECC actually might have made me less confident in my Excel abilities, just because I know how much I have to learn. Seeing people do things like Sudoku or origami in Excel is really inspirational.”
It is a perspective that speaks to the depth of the MECC community. The ceiling is genuinely high. And watching people push against it, building Sudoku solvers and origami models inside a spreadsheet, is both humbling and motivating in equal measure.
When asked what MECC gives students that they cannot find anywhere else, Alyssia’s answer is practical, funny, and completely true.
“One of the greatest things is that you have the best icebreaker possible. Whenever you need a fun fact you win. I have not met a single person that does not get a kick out of the fact that I do competitive Excel Esports.”
And when pressed to choose between the competition, the community, and learning as her favorite part of MECC, Alyssia answers openly.
“I came for the spreadsheets but stayed for the people.”
She has made Excel friends as far away as New Zealand. Her teammates at UT Austin have become some of her closest friends. Practice sessions regularly turn into social events. The community is not a nice extra that comes alongside MECC. For Alyssia, it is the whole point.
Her message to any student still on the fence is the kind only someone who has lived it can give.
“Once you get over the fact that you are competing in a professional software, you can really take this anywhere. I started doing competitive Excel a bit over a year ago and since then I found an incredible group of friends, my Excel skills have improved exponentially, and I can say I am an international athlete.”
From =COUNTIF() to international athlete. From a single hype video in a business analytics class to president of a competitive Excel team, a Washington Post feature, and a parade down the Las Vegas Strip.
Alyssia came for the spreadsheets. She stayed for everything else.
Watch the Full Interview
Hear more about Alyssia Menezes’ story and the full journey from a single hype video in a business analytics class to becoming president of a competitive Excel team. Watch the full interview with Alyssia here: