eSports veteran joining the smash scene (help!)

[TheDazzLe]

Hello everyone, I go by Dazzle and am a long time FPS (call of duty mainly) player. I played extremely competitively from Mw2 through black ops 2.
I played smash with friends a lot the past couple years, and until about 9-10 months ago i had no idea about the competitive smash scene, and at this point I am ready to start being a part of it.
I know there are some local tournaments in my area, i live about 5-10 minutes outside of chicago. But i need to know how to really start. Grinding tech skill is fun and all but in terms of finding people to play friendlies and things like that i am kind of lost. I want to avoid showing up to a local and getting bodied, while at the same time not knowing anyone there.
My problems seem a bit scattered, but if someone could shed light on how they entered the scene or started finding cliques of people to play and train with that would really be awesome.
I love this community already
Thanks.

 

[AAkacia]

I did it using smashboards. There are sub-forums separated by region. I used smashboards to find some local smashfest, and then started going to tournaments just to play friendlies with people there! Don't be afraid to call ups to play winner of friendlies at a tournament. It's that easy :D

 

[Hokori]

To make things easier in case you haven't visited those forums already:

Regional Zones
Tournament Listings

If you use Facebook, be on the lookout for Facebook Smash social groups as people tend to use that to communicate with the locals nowadays.

Good luck with everything and welcome to the forums!