By T’Neil Gooden
This weekend, the Brooklyn College Esports team represented Brooklyn in the Local Area Network (LAN): Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Spring Showdown for Valorant in Troy, New York. This event was hosted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), with over 30 colleges in attendance and over 100 students trying for the ECAC spring title.
The tournament involved three games with their respective titles: Valorant, a character-based tactical shooter game; Rocket League, a vehicular soccer video game; and Overwatch 2, a team-based action game set in the optimistic future.
This event was sponsored by Chipotle, allowing the winning college of each game to win a semester of free Chipotle. There were schools from near and far, the farthest west being Idaho and the farthest east being Florida.
For gamers, their gamertags carry a lot of memories and history for each individual. It can be them reminiscing on a memory from their childhood or providing them with a form of identity. A few of the BC Valorant players explained their gamertag lore.
“So originally it came from a company called VitaSoy, or Vita, and they’re soy milk. So I was like, something that could connect to my childhood. So I was like, VitaSoy, why not?” Huang told The Vanguard.
The captain of the BC Valorant team also has quite a story when it comes to his gamertag.
“So somebody else came up with it for me, and it’s because when I was growing up, I was really skinny. I mean, I still kind of am. I used to get called Noodle Arms, so now I’m Noodle. It’s my way of taking it back and repurposing the name,” Finkelstein told The Vanguard.
The BC gamers gained new knowledge of esports from being able to travel out of the city to compete for this prestigious title.
“It was so good. It’s my first time playing outside of CUNY, I guess, so it was a new experience to play with other colleges other than CUNY and some SUNY schools,” said Damirjon Orzuev, gamertag: Muddy Kelpo, from the BC Maroon Valorant Team.
Before competing, the players were met with words from the mayor of Troy, New York, Carmella Mantello, who was very interested in the growth esports has made in the past few years.
“If you told me two years ago that there would be an esports competition in Troy, I would have told you, don’t be ridiculous,” Mantello told the audience. “I used to tell my sons to not play games and now I’m intrigued by esports.”
Valorant was the only game out of the three that BC qualified for, and even though they had an upset against one of the top seed universities, the University of Delaware, with a score of 13-4, they had a great time with this gaming experience.
“I really don’t have any experience playing in person, so this experience was nice,” David Huang, gamertag: Vitasoy, of the BC Maroon Valorant Team, told The Vanguard. “Seeing a lot of faces that I’ve never seen and being able to connect the faces between player names and players themselves was an awesome experience.”
These games got quite competitive and the competition led to long game plays. The winner of the Valorant Spring Showdown was Keiser University, which defeated the University of Delaware. These two teams played for over four hours, and ultimately, Keiser was able to bring home the semester of free Chipotle.
For Rocket League, King University was able to take home the Spring title, and for Overwatch 2, Binghamton Univerity took home the title in a big upset against the College of Staten Island (CSI).
Even with their loss in the early rounds, BC Esports was quite proud of being able to qualify for such an event.
“It was such a good opportunity. I had a lot of high hopes, and I know that’s usually not a good thing to do, but I mean, being in an event like this for the first time is really exciting,” Grant Finkelstein, gamertag: Noodle, captain of the BC Maroon Valorant team, told The Vanguard.
The founder and director of BC Esports, Alexander Raff, accompanied the Valorant team to the playoffs and had good things to say about his players.
“This semester for the Valorant team specifically was a really big kind of comeback moment. Last semester, we slumped a bit. They had arguably their worst performance, you know, ever that we’ve had,” Raff told The Vanguard. “They went back to the drawing board. They worked with their coach. You know, they worked with me. They worked with their schedules. They did everything they could to try and give this their all. And, you know, they’re upsetting teams that are above them.”
The team not only got to experience playing in-person for the first time, but they were also able to connect with each other on a much larger scale.
“The chemistry we have together and the time we spend together. It’s not just about winning, you know; it’s about coming here, putting us on the map,” Muhammad Samigjonoov, gamertag: Silent Spring, told The Vanguard.
The Valorant team has not given up hope, as they are ready to compete in more in-person events and represent BC even more in the near future.
“Doing these events is the best experience you can have as a collegiate player; the more opportunities it provides is incredible,” Andy Qiu, gamertag: Samuwatt from the BC Maroon Valorant Team, told The Vanguard.
The BC esports team has explained that they are here to stay and look forward to continuing to compete in more competitions in the future.
“Esports builds a big community, I would say. It takes a lot of pressure and hard work,” Qiu told The Vanguard. “And if we’re able to showcase that, then it would just bring us more exposure and possibly more funding and more players and improve our community even more.”
If students are interested in joining the esports team, you can go to their Discord and Instagram, @cunybcesports.