Colorado College esports team wins 1st conference championship

While millions of you were focused on the Final Four this past weekend, a team at Colorado College quietly earned its first conference championship … in esports.

Next to the Tutt Library, downstairs in a converted computer lab, the CC Tigers esports team practices in a variety of competitive video games. The team just got back from Kerrville, Texas, where the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference’s inaugural esports championship was held.

“We showed that against other schools our size in our athletic conference, we’re really dominating,” said Henry Hinds. His fingers jittered quickly around his keyboard while his right hand flicked a mouse to control his character in the online shooter game Overwatch.

Hinds isn’t putting it lightly, either. The CC Tigers team earned its stripes by dominating the conference tournament, which included the games Fortnite, League of Legends, Overwatch, and Super Smash Bros.

Hinds also said some of the team members are ranked as grandmaster players, which would put them in the “top 1% of players in the world.”

Team Captain Jonathan Farrell said the team was relaxed going into the tournament, and they ended up pulling out the overall win with first-place victories in Overwatch and League of Legends.

“We were feeling pretty confident coming in because we had played the teams before and had felt pretty good against them,” Farrell said.

Now, the team has bragging rights among the conference. But the goal is for esports to become a bigger part of college athletics.

“It’s a wild west right now,” said the team’s coordinator, Chad Schonewill. Schonewill oversees the group and helped set up the team’s practice space. The school bought a batch of gaming computers, and Logitech helped supply some of the peripherals. The gaming area also has a broadcast studio for members to provide commentary over gameplay streams.

Hinds said the NCAA doesn’t govern esports at the moment, and while conferences have set up their own tournaments, many other college teams join tournaments that are open to the public. He hopes that the NCAA will embrace esports at a national championship level.

Schonewill said the team’s activities will wind down for the summer, but they’ll be back in competitions in the coming fall.