Esports plugging in for another successful season

Coach Brian Unruh and the CF Esports team kicked off their season this past week. The teams play their matches at the Ambush Arena, located near The Vibe Coffee and Ice Cream  and a handful of blocks down the street from Peet. Matches are played through the online systems of the respective games. The matches are organized by PlayVS, which hosts leagues for numerous video games.

Each fall and spring, players can sign up for Pokemon United, Chess, Fortnite, Valorant, Super Smash Brothers, Rocket League, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, Madden and more. Matches are played once a week, and the current season runs from the week of Sep. 21 up to the middle of November, with the playoffs happening in the weeks that follow. 

The program is different from most other sport programs in the sense of the goals for their season. Instead of aiming to win nationals, the primary goal for Unruh is for “players have a good time, they have fun, and it’s also fun to see teams get better throughout the season.” 

The players echoed the same things. Jack Peterson, a senior who has played Esports for four seasons and has participated in APex, Valorant, Marvel Rivals and Fortnite, had a very similar view. “We’re playing Valorant right now, but none of us know how to play, so we’re just playing it for fun.” Peterson also said that he joined because “you can have scholarships if you do well enough. But also, friends. I love playing with friends.”

Sophomore Cameron Roundy, who captains the Marvel Rivals team, said that doing Esports and other extracurriculars “means you get into better colleges, it looks better on the applications and stuff, and it’s just really fun because you get to meet a lot of new people who share the same interests as you.”

While these goals are simple, there are some challenges that come with them. For the Esports teams, one of the struggles is having enough players to participate in some of the games.

 As Unruh said, “wanting to play a match or game that, say, requires five or six players, and I only have two, then that becomes an obstacle.” In the case of this, the teams try to recruit as many players as they can.

Peterson has also found some difficulties from the player’s level. “You have to be moderate with your toxicity,” he said. “You’re playing a game. You have to control yourself.” 

Roundy also acknowledged that working as a team was a difficulty at the start of his season. “A lot of people are just used to playing the game alone; now that we’re all talking to each other, we have to figure out how to work together to complete things instead of doing it individually.”

In the past, the various teams have faced hardships, as well as success. For Roundy, his Marvel Rivals tournament took the top 80 teams last year. Roundy’s was ranked 81. “My goal this year is to make it into the top 80. I think I’d be really happy with that because we have a really solid team this year.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Peterson and his partner made it to the quarterfinals for the Fortnite tournament a couple of years ago. The tournament takes only the 32 best duos from the central timezone.