eSports team working to improve in their first season
Paige Martinez editor-in-cheif
The eSports team is in full swing with Overwatch, Hearthstone, Madden and Super Smash Ultimate all currently competing.
On Sunday, October 6th, the Eagles took on “Legacy 489” from the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University in Overwatch. The match was a clean sweep for Legacy 489 winning two rounds in a row. The main reason for the loss was a lack of team coordination. They had an hour before their next match. They used this time to work on team coordination.
Their next match was against the “Honey Badgers” of the University of Texas in El Paso. While they lost this match (0-2), the difference was “night and day” according to the coach, Kevin van der Spek. “We learned from the mistakes and made drastic improvements in less than an hour.” Van der Spek and the Overwatch captain, Troy Cline, are working on a solid practice plan to make a comeback in their later games.
The Hearthstone team competed on Monday, October 7th against “Team Ostrich” of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Team Ostrich took the match (3-2), but not without a fight. The Eagles won with their “Combo Priest” deck and their “One Turn Kill” or “OTK Paladin” deck. The combo deck focuses on using a specific combination of cards to boost minions health quickly and switch it with their attack to create a strong threat to the opponents health points. The OTK deck requires the perfect set up. The Eagles had to quickly draw all their cards in their deck in order to use the combo which can hit the opponent for all of their health points in one kill.
On Monday, October 14th, the Eagles played the “Mecha’thun Murlocs” of Utah State University. This was an exciting match because the Eagles often scrimmage against this team for practice and there had been a recent “meta shift”. Blizzard, the company that makes Hearthstone, recently added a few more cards into the playable roster that had been only usable in non-competitive play known as the “wild”. This has brought on a change in what decks are most viable for competitive play. The “Mecha-thun Murlocs” took the win (3-3) in the end.
USU Eastern’s four Super Smash Ultimate teams started off round one of the competition on Thursday, October 10th. Spencer Hunt won his match (2-0) to start the Eagles off with a strong win. Adding another win to the count was Carson Donaldson (2-1). The last win of the night went to Casey Singer (2-0). That leaves the overall total at 3 wins and one loss after the first round of Super Smash Ultimate.
The Madden competition had its first round on Tuesday, October 8th. Cameron Grant passed round one with a bye. Bryce Gingery won his match through a forfeit of his opponent from Iowa Central.
You can watch all of eSport’s matches and their practices at www.twitch.tv/usue_esports. There are upcoming matches for Hearthstone on October 21st and 28th and 8pm, Super Smash Ultimate on October 17th and 24th with varying times, and Madden on October 22nd and 29th at 5 pm. Tune in to support your Eagles. If you would like to get involved with eSports, reach out at [email protected]. They are looking for players in Smite, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch and League of Legends.
