Gaming is serious business for Morningside\u2019s esports team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morningside esports was founded, in 2016, as a club that people could join to play video games and compete in local and online tournaments. Morningside esports has since grown to be a 25-person roster over three separate teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In previous years Morningside esports was run by Dean Stevens, whose idea it was to form an esports team at Morningside. This worked okay for the first few years, but as new Head Coach, Jared Amundson said, \u201cI have a lot of respect for what they were able to do, but I believe they maxed out what they were able to do with the program. This team needed someone who\u2019s primary job is to help us win and not someone who can maybe help after they have finished with their grading.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amundson, who is in his first year as head coach, played for the League of Legends team during his college career. After graduating, Morningside hired him on to become the League coach, where he went on to help his team win Morningside its first GGLeagues championship in the fall of 2019.
In June of 2020, it was announced that Amundson would be taking over as the head coach for the program. As head coach, Amundson\u2019s jobs include coaching and managing his players, managing his assistant coaches, and recruiting new talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under Amundson, there have been many changes to the program, with the most important being how serious people are taking it.
\u201cIn previous years, it was a lot laxer, and it would sometimes be hard to even get a full team together for our actual matches,\u201d said Sebastian Tovar, a League of Legends and Valorant player. \u201cThis year, we are treating it as an actual collegiate sport and not like a place where we can play video games with our friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year all three teams practice daily for two hours, spread out over a six-hour block, while in previous years, teams would practice two times a week at most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another thing that has changed with the new management is what league the teams are playing in. Previously it was up to the team captain to find a tournament for their team to play in. The problem with this is that they would be facing teams of a much higher skill level (picture the Mustangs going up against the Hawkeyes.) This year, all three teams are competing in GGLeagues, which puts teams together based on their skill rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the problems facing esports is that it is hard for people who do not understand the games to get involved. Describing how people react when he tells them that he is an esports player Tovar said, \u201cThey are generally confused, even though esports is bigger than it ever has been, a lot of people still don\u2019t understand how video games can be considered a sport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amundson hopes to work on this, saying in an interview from August, \u201cI want to get this program up to the point where people are in freshman orientation and hear about esports.\u201d He then admitted. \u201cI want students to go around in introductions and hear \u2018I play football,\u2019 \u2018I play basketball,\u2019 \u2018I play esports.\u2019 With that kind of word of mouth following, I know we will be on the respect level we need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morningside esports has started the year off strong, having already played seven games among the three teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of this writing, The Overwatch team is 2-1 with their next match scheduled for Wednesday, October 7th, where they will face off against the 3-0 AC Badgers. Quentin Charbonneau, assistant coach for Overwatch, has said, \u201cWe have a good chance of beating them, as long as we counterplay and focus on targets, we should be able to get an easy win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The League of Legends team has started the year off 1-1 dropping a close game against Davenport university last week. They go on to face the 0-2 Alma College team this Thursday.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Valorant has had a rough start getting blown out and going 0-2 in their first two matches. They have a bye week this week. Tovar has said that the beginning of the season has been rough, but they need to focus and get better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of Morningside\u2019s games can be watched live or on-demand at https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/msideesports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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