John Reynders, the President of Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, has said on many occasions that “At Morningside, we are committed to striving for excellence in everything that we do.” We can see this from at the top with President Reynders himself down to one of Morningside’s most recent additions to their faculty, Jared Amundson.

Jared, the newly appointed head coach of Morningside’s eSports program, has fully committed to this belief. In his first semester as head coach of this program, he was able to guide all three of his teams to the semifinals of their respective divisions.

Jared spent his college years studying math at Morningside college. In addition to this, Jared participated in three different sports during his college career. He earned three All-Great Plains Athletic Conference honors as a placekicker for the football team, he was a goalie for the soccer team, and he played the support role for the League of Legends team.

Jared brings with him a knowledge of how other sports teams function and how they practice that previous co-coaches Dean Stevens and David Elder did not possess.

With this knowledge, Jared has made the esports program more organized and stricter.

“I think that the best thing Jared has done is to establish order in the nexus.” Matthew “HiddenSquid” Roop, a freshmen Overwatch and League of Legends player, said, “He laid out rules for the teams at the beginning of the semester, and he cracked down on anyone who broke them.”

Even though Jared does not play all three of the games that he coaches, he has stilled helped all of his teams improve over the fall season. He has accomplished this by giving tips on how to work better as a team and also hosting a group therapy session of sorts after hard-fought losses.

“I think as a head coach, he has done an excellent job of helping teams improve, even though he doesn’t play some of the games,” Matthew stated.

One of the predicaments of becoming the head coach of a team only two years after you graduate is that there are still going to be some of your previous teammates on teams that you are coaching.

Sebastian “Seabass” Tovar was a teammate of Jared’s during Jared’s college days and still competes on the League of Legends team. “It was kind of odd at first having to listen to and take direction from someone whom I use to play with, but once the initial shock wore off, I was able to acknowledge him as my coach and not as one of the guys.”

Moving forward, Jared hopes to continue to grow eSports level of respect on campus, saying, “I want to get this program up to the point where people are in freshman orientation and hear about esports, I want students to go around in introductions and hear ‘I play football,’ ‘I play basketball,’ ‘I play esports.’ With that kind of word of mouth following, I know we will be on a respect level we need to be.”

Jared is looking forward to the next semester’s season and is hoping that he will be able to bring home his first trophy as the Morningside eSports Head Coach.