Esports Weekly Wrap-Up: Feb 26th – Mar 2nd

Amelia Green Feb 26, 2024

Welcome back, Vandal fans! The week of the 26th has the Esports lab in full swing. There are many of our regular season activities to get to, but there are also a few special events prepared. Saturday has a Smash Monthly Tournament and the Big Sky Rocket League championship.

Monday kicked off with RL, CS2, R6, EAFC, and Smash competing intensely! RL JV2 had a forfeit from Alabama State University, but JV1 had a struggle against Texas A&M International. This ultimately led to a Vandal loss of 2-3. Overall, there was a lack of teamwork put against a team that communicated well. RL Varsity was pitted against Neumont’s B team and won 3-0! A fantastic match, indeed. After RL, R6 had a match against Husson University that concluded as 2-0! Unfortunately, our R6 JV team lost against WIU that night as well. EAFC’s Bobo won their match against Coe College 2-0, a fantastic boost for the EAFC team. The night continued with a CS2 match against Northeastern University. This was a wonderful struggle that ended as a 2-1 win for the Vandals! To conclude the evening, Smash ended as the opponent forfeited.

Tuesday had a four game line-up for the evening: Apex, Valorant, Overwatch, and SF6. Apex, as a lobby game, concluded with our team earning a ranking total of 144 points now! Valorant Varsity had an ECAC match against SUNY in Canton. This was a solid win. The first map was Sunset and ended 13-7, a wonderful beginning. The following map was a similar score of 13-7 on Split. JV had a match against Catawba College. With a 2-1 win, the Vandals began in Bind. This was a close loss at 10-13 but thankfully didn’t impede the mentality of the team going into the second map. This took place in Ascent and finished as a 13-9 win for our Vandals. The tiebreaker map, Icebox, is really about who knows the map better, which we proved to be us in a 13-1. Following Valorant games, there was a Varsity Overwatch match. Varsity was pitted against University of Alaska Fairbanks. This concluded as a 3-2 win for the Vandals, very close! It also brought our ranking up to 3 in the NACE League. The Street Fighter matches had varied success. To begin, Jack had a forfeit win from Moravian University. Galion had an unfortunate 0-3 loss against University of Southern Florida, and Droe lost 0-3 to Concord University.

Wednesday was a rather easy night. To start, OW2 Varsity had a match against SE Missouri State University. This was a forfeit loss for the Vandals, as was the JV match against Hood College. Valorant Varsity won their match due to Kansas forfeiting, so there wasn’t much to say for many of the games. This does, however, place our Varsity team in first place for the NACE League. JV won 2-1 against the Sitting Bull College with the third game pulling an amazing reverse sweep from 0-6 to 13-9. The final event of the night was thejalili’s match against Thomas college resulting in a 2-0 win!

Kicking off Thursday night, Hood and Doom of the TFT teams competed in their respective lobbies. Hood unfortunately only earned two points in this lobby, but we have high expectations for future lobbies! Other fantastic news, Doom takes 1st place – one of four teams in our program to be currently holding that position – with 69 points in total. Following TFT, Valorant Varsity had another match, but this one was for ECAC. We unfortunately had to forfeit due to player substitution issues and lost this match. R6 Varsity and JV also played that night. Varsity went toe-to-toe with Lawerence Technological University and won 2-0. This brought our R6 Varsity into the third 1st place team in the program! JV also brought in a 2-0 win against the Atlantic University Gladiators, cinching 3rd place in NACE. SSBU competed with University of Texas in Dallas, taking a 0-2 loss admirably. Texas is a fantastic program, and our Vandals put up a stiff fight for them. LoL unfortunately concluded as a 0-2 loss against Mountain Cat University. This was a special game as it was a match between two ECAC staff for a third place position and a more secure spot in the tournament later in the season.

Friday was a quiet three-game night. Starting with LoL JV against Concord University, our Vandals unfortunately lost 0-2. However, we were able to push our opponents to a 35 minute game! Omega Strikers lost as well against WFU in another 0-2. Certainly an unfortunate night for the program, but our CS2 team picked it up in the NACE League. The match was against California State University – San Marcos, and we had a solid 2-0 win.

The special Saturday events were held throughout the day. We began with the CECC Big Sky RL Championship Qualifiers! There were three other amazing teams that we competed against. We took the first round against University of Montana, 3-0 before moving into the next round. As this was a round robin style tournament, we competed against Northern Arizona University while UMT went against Weber State. We unfortunately lost the second round 0-3, meaning we were going into the third round fighting for second place. The match against Weber State was similar to that of NAU, resulting in an 0-3 loss. The final match between NAU and Weber finished in NAU’s favor and sends them to further in the Championship. The other significant event was our Monthly Stock Trade that Palouse Gaming holds in our lab! As always, there were many competitors excited to play some Smash!

Schedule for next week:

Monday: RL Varsity VS Redlands University, RL JV VS University of Minnesota — Twin Cities

Tuesday: Apex, Val Varsity VS Long Island University, Val JV VS George Fox Club team, OW2 VS Redlands University, OW2 JV VS Neumont, and Val JV VS SUNY Canton

Wednesday: OW2 Varsity VS University of Pittsburgh, OW2 JV VS Virginia Wesleyan University, Val Varsity VS Siena College, and Val JV VS John Brown University

Thursday: TFT – Hood, TFT – Doom, R6 Varsity VS Keiser University, R6 JV VS Glenville State University, Smash VS Texas A&M University

Friday: LoL Varsity VS Randolph-Macon College, LoL JV VS SUNY Plattsburg, CS2 VS Cal Poly

Thank you for reading! Be sure to join us on Twitch, YouTube, or in person at the Pitman Center!