On Nov. 1, the Saginaw Valley State University eSports club held a grand opening in Student Life during its Valorant match against the Providence Friars eSports team.
The event featured a viewing party for students to come support the team, hang out with friends and enjoy food and drinks. eSports Graduate Assistant Alexander Gloshen said that the grand opening event was an opportunity to invite more students to come support the video game-based team.
“This is the first advertised eSports event of the year, but we have people hanging out in Student Life watching our teams compete almost every night,” Gloshen said. “We wanted to advertise this event to the rest of the school and attract people that may not have been to the eSports room yet or watched our eSports teams.”
eSports is a recently introduced club sport team at SVSU and is designed for students to play video games competitively against other schools.
The club was launched last semester after the addition of the eSports room in Student Life. However, this semester marks the first time the club sport is playing competitively, and the team has chosen to compete in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) while the program grows.
“Currently, we have 52 competitive eSports members,” Gloshen said. “eSports is the overarching team but beneath the hood we compete in five different games. Those games are Valorant, League of Legends, Super Smash Bros, Overwatch 2 and Rocket League.”
Captain of the Valorant team, fifth year integrated science major Trevor Sanchez, added that over 100 people came to watch and support the Valorant team at the grand opening. Sanchez was happy with how the match played out.
“We played against one of the top five teams in our league who hasn’t lost a game yet,” he said. “We didn’t quite take a game from them either, but we were the closest any team has gotten to beating them.”
Sanchez emphasized the large amount of time and effort the team put into preparing for the match.
“We practice for upwards of 10 hours each week as a full team, as well as more time just playing with one or two other members of the team,” Sanchez said.
Going forward into the year, Sanchez remains positive about the team’s growth.
“I hope that the team will continue to grow and improve to be one of the best teams in our league,” he said.
Gloshen added that the team is thrilled to finally have the chance to compete in eSports.
“We are extremely excited to offer eSports here at SVSU,” Gloshen said. “It took a long time to come to fruition, but now that it is here, the response has been immense.”
The team competes in Super Smash Brothers on Monday, Valorant on Tuesday, Rocket League and Overwatch 2 on Wednesday and League of Legends Friday nights at 8 p.m. in Student Life. Anyone interested in learning more can visit the team’s Instagram page at svsuesports.
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