Waldorf E-sports Team is a Force to be Reckoned With
By Gary Huizenga
The Waldorf University E-sports team is a relatively unseen force on campus that has, from humble beginnings, made a name for itself in the e-sports community.
The E-sports team formed to bring gamers at Waldorf together and give them a place to play competitively and represent their university. They started by contacting other universities to find out how and where to compete in League of Legends tournaments and began participating in some unofficial tournaments last year.
After a moderate success, they decided to participate in the official League of Legends tournament where they played against universities all over the United States. They made it all the way to playoffs where they lost to a university from Florida.
“Everyone had fun,” Gabriel Muñoz Labaleta, head of the e-sports team and team coordinator, “but that one isn’t divided by ranks, so we played against people that were way better than us.”
This year, the e-sports team has been working on expanding to gather teams to compete in other games. They’ve started to build an Overwatch team and one person is participating in Madden. They also have people playing Smash Bros and Hearthstone and continue to look for more people with an interest in e-sports.
The group meets in a somewhat unconventional way, using the popular voice chat application for gamers, Discord, to communicate from separate locations, rather than gathering in one place.
The group has plans to convert Gatsby’s into an e-sports arena next year. For now, they meet a couple of times a week to play and once roughly once a week to practice.
With the League of Legends tournaments in progress once again, experienced players are working hard with newer recruits to get the whole team up to the same level. They’ve done well so far this year and once again have made it to playoffs.
The team is also proud to have created a Twitch channel, which allows their fans to follow them live and support the team. They hope to continue to improve this channel as they acquire better equipment. Right now they have 25 followers, including Waldorf students and other viewers.
Much of the e-sports progress and accomplishments on campus have gone unnoticed, but e-sports leaders hope to change that in the coming semesters. They’ve gotten in touch with marketing to create promotional materials and send out weekly emails to keep the student body informed on their progress. They’re also looking for an e-sports coach to help them schedule practices, be in charge of administration, and recruit.
“The most important thing (about e-sports) is that it creates a group of people that couldn’t find anyone that couldn’t find the same interest,” said Labaleta. “It brings them together and allows them to improve their skills and teamwork and be a part of a team for people who can’t be in a sport.”
Anyone interested in following the e-sports team on Twitch can do so at http://www.twitch.tv/wwge or keep up with their regular emails. The group is always looking for recruits and is open to gamers with any level of experience.