As we don't have this as a category yet, feel free to put your runs here so if/when it does become a category, I'll personally add your runs to the boards.

The main route is to finish 8 matches with no more than 5 misses so that you can fight Matt on the 9th match. You lose 20 points out of a perfect 200 for every miss, and you need 1500 to get to Matt. If you miss more than 5 but less than 16, you will get to Matt on the 10th match.

As for strats, pause buffering is obviously the most important thing to get down. My reaction time is really poor so I have to start pausing on Megan, but even up to Jake you can probably get at least a couple of slices in without needing to pause if you can react fast enough. It's helpful to use the shadows to know when to start pause buffering, but with enough practice you'll get the muscle memory for timing them anyways (except when the object drops are delayed, which wastes a lot of time. they are RNG as far as i can tell). When the opponents start slicing really fast, you can watch where their saber is to prepare yourself for your slice, but they can wave their swords around a lot before going for the slice, so don't rely on it. Also, I think you can begin your slice during the pause to get a basically instant slice if you time it just right.

also, here are all 9 names in case you want to use my splits

Beat Ryan Beat Megan Beat Ashley Beat Siobhán Beat Stéphanie Beat Jake Beat Patrick Beat Hiromi Beat Matt