A Blue Springs boy is traveling the globe all thanks to Pokemon. 10-year-old Phillip Barragan has been competitive gaming for 2 1/2 years.
"Me and my mom found this Pokemon tournament online and I did so well they gave me a travel stipend to Indianapolis and it pretty much went all up hill from there," said Phillip.
Since then, Pokemon tournaments have taken him all over the country and overseas.
"I've been to San Francisco, London, Athens GA, Fort Wayne IN and a bunch of other places," he said. "My favorite was probably Fort Wayne because I pretty much won every time I went there."
Phillip is a five-time regional champion and has competed in the world Pokemon tournament twice. His next stop?
"Pokemon finally gave me a paid trip to Australia, which I'm very excited to do," Phillip said.
For many of the competitions, Phillip's mom says he pays his own way through fundraising. He heads to Australia in March and then Brazil to compete in April.
Phillip competes on the Pokemon video game, but there are also competitions that focus on the card version of the game.
When Phillip isn't traveling, he's practicing back home in Kansas CIty. Over the weekend he attended a small tournament at Collector's Cache in Lenexa.
"We're a place where people can come locally to play and by testing your skills at local events like this you can measure if you are well trained enough, good enough to compete at a higher level, like a national level, at the worlds level," said Ben Parrott, retail store manager at Collector's Cache. "The players who come here today will get points to even go, if they do well enough, to play at higher events."
The store does competitive tournaments once a month, but focuses more on the card version of the game.
"Most of the time it's casual we want to just have them come in and have fun, that's the point of all of these games, that's why we're here," said Parrott. "The kids can come in, be with kids who have the same interest, and just play and have a good day."
No matter how big or small, you will always see Phillip in his Pokemon hat.
"My grandparents gave me this hat and I just started bringing it to Pokemon tournaments because I thought, 'Hey this actually gives me a lot of luck!'" Phillip said.
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Jade DeGood can be reached at Jade.DeGood@KSHB.com.
