Pictured Above: USF plays against the University of Waterloo in a Rocket League match during the Collegiate Rocket League Fall 2020 tournament.
Courtesy of Antonio Gonzalez
By Michael Alden
While many clubs and organizations were hitting the pause button this summer amidst an ongoing pandemic, the USF Esports program pressed play.
The consolidation of USF’s three campuses in July occurred alongside the esports program’s transition to an officially recognized recreational program under the Recreation and Wellness Department.
Von Williams, the Competitive Sports Coordinator at the St. Petersburg campus, organized tournaments and helped students find their roles in the program over the summer.
He believes consolidation had a positive impact on the launch.
“Consolidation has been a tremendous help,” Williams said. “It allows us to join our numbers together and allows our students to be in communication with students at other campuses.”
From the onset, Williams and other faculty leaders empowered students to build the program they envisioned.
“Our students were really gung-ho about it,” Williams said. “We started training them and now they pretty much run the streams and leagues themselves.”
Students play a wide variety of games together, both casually and competitively. Some of the more popular games include League of Legends, Call of Duty, Valorant, Minecraft and Super Smash Bros. Individual games have their own student-run clubs.
Competitive players can try out for club leagues and play in tournaments with students from other universities. Casual players are able to jump into a friendly community, find students to play with, and participate in weekly events like Warzone Wednesdays, a night when students get together online to play the popular Battle Royale mode in Call of Duty.
Players and staff use a gamer-centric messaging platform called Discord as their primary hub to communicate and organize. The USF Esports Discord server currently has over 1,100 members, with specific channels for certain games.
They recently celebrated their 1,000 Discord member milestone with a watch party on Twitch, a popular streaming platform for video games. The official USF Esports Twitch channel is used to cast live gameplay, including tournaments, league matches and weekly events.
Olivia Schmidt, a junior English major at the St. Petersburg campus and moderator of the Discord channel, sees the esports program in broader terms.
“It’s not just about gaming, it’s also about the skills you learn through communication and teamwork and building up a community with shared interests,” Schmidt said in an interview over Discord.
Schmidt, who anticipates a career in game development, described a booming industry with many career paths in marketing, finance, production, and casting. She hopes for a future where an esports team is “just as much a part of a school’s identity as the football team is.”
“There’s already a lot of younger people that are looking for colleges and universities that offer these kinds of programs like what USF has,” Schmidt said. “I feel lucky to be part of a school that recognizes this need and has already taken the necessary steps.”
Andrew Ross, a graduate assistant staff member for USF Esports, describes an ambitious community with a bright future.
“Our esports community is hungry for success. I think we all have a vision of what this program can be, but we’re still in our maturity stage, we’re still growing,” Ross said. “It’s a perfect opportunity for us to let the students mold the program for what they want it to be.”
Ross is a gamer himself and a student in the Vinik Sport and Entertainment Management graduate program at the Muma College of Business on the Tampa campus. He stressed that the esports program is for all types of gamers, not just competitive players.
“If you’re nervous about getting involved, there are people in our Discord who are just like you,” Ross said. “There are people who share your ideals…we’re all gamers so we all kind of have those same tendencies. Don’t be afraid and just jump in with both feet.”
Ross encourages students who are interested in the program to join the USF Esports Discord server. Students can also register for the individual competitive game clubs through BullSync.
There are two major upcoming events this semester for USF Esports: the state-wide Battle for Florida tournament and the inaugural USF Invitational competition.
The Battle for Florida event takes place on the weekend of Oct. 31 and is open to any college student in the state. Registration is free. Players will be competing in FIFA, Rocket League, and Mario Kart.
The USF Invitational is scheduled for Nov. 5-15. This event is strictly for the competitive clubs who will be playing against teams from other universities across the country. Teams will be playing Rainbow Six: Siege, Overwatch, Rocket League, Valorant and League of Legends.
Both events will be streamed on the official USF Esports Twitch channel.
For more information on USF’s Esports program, you can find them on Discord, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
