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Syracuse University’s varsity esports teams hosted their first open tryouts in program history on Sept. 3 and 4 to kick off their inaugural season as members of the Power Esports Conference.

On Tuesday evening, more than 40 SU students gathered outside the university’s esports room in the Barnes Center at the Arch. Prospective e-athletes had the opportunity to try out for the program’s six teams, competing in Call of Duty, Counter-Strike 2, Overwatch 2, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Rocket League and Valorant.

“This is definitely a good turnout,” Ryan Blankenhorn, an Overwatch coach and junior esports major said. “We’ve got 36 PCs in there and we’ve already booked every single one of them.”

For some attendees, it served as an opportunity to compete in their respective games at the national level while others had less ambitious expectations.

“They’re really trying to build a community, not just each team, but the whole program,” Luca Cook, a junior studying aerospace engineering, said. “It’s definitely cool seeing the school actually take more of an active role in promoting it, especially since it was barely started when I joined.”

Cook first got involved with esports at SU as a freshman playing Overwatch at the club level. Entering his third year, he said the program has “transformed.”

One of these changes came in spring 2024. The club started transitioning to varsity, Travis Yang, SU Esports’ Director of Competition, said. In May, the Counter-Strike 2 team beat Oklahoma Christian University to take home a national title. Yang described last spring’s accomplishment as part of the program’s “year zero,” because they weren’t officially a varsity team.

He said that as college esports continue to expand, more and more Division I schools will begin to offer esports at the varsity level. In the interim phase, club and varsity level teams have sometimes competed against each other, like SU’s position last season.

As Syracuse’s esports teams enter their first official varsity season, they will compete in the newly established Power Esports Conference. The university’s membership in the PEC was announced in an Aug. 16 release.

This year, Syracuse will face opponents from across the country in seven weeks of competition each semester, with a final national championship taking place in late spring. In conference play, SU faces the seven other members of the PEC — including Boise State University, Michigan State University, The Ohio State University, University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska and University of Southern California.

Many schools in the conference have joined SU in offering esports as an area of academic study. Boise State offers an esports certification program to undergraduates that allows students to “demonstrate proficiency with esports technologies, investigate emerging trends in data, analytics, media and esports content,” according to its website.

At SU, the newly established esports major – a joint area of study offered by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics – began enrolling students this fall. It’s set to open a state-of-the-art competitive gaming facility in Schine Student Center in January 2025, where SU’s varsity teams will compete.

Esports majors are offered three tracks: esports business and management, esports communications and esports media and design. The staff and faculty of the esports academic program and varsity teams overlap but are separate programs, according to the SU Esports website.

While the esports major offers students an opportunity to enter the ever expanding field of video game design, production and business, the esports varsity programs offer a new arena for collegiate competition outside the world of athletics.

“One thing I find interesting is that a lot of these students come from traditional athletic backgrounds,” Yang said. “I find that students who played high school sports have an easier time with esports, they are used to the competitive environment.”

One of these former high-school athletes is Rocket League Captain Gabriel Goodwin. A freshman studying business, Goodwin was recruited as the university’s first ever e-athlete on scholarship.

Rocket League, a “high-powered hybrid of arcade-style soccer” as described by the game’s developer Epic Games, came naturally to Goodwin, who said he played soccer throughout childhood and spent two years on his high school’s varsity team.

“A lot of the ideas correlate, like keeping possession of the ball. Tactically, it’s very similar,” Goodwin said.

As the team’s first official varsity season begins, the freshman captain has been tasked with building a winning culture, Yang said. While prospective teammates began their tryout matches, Goodwin walked between players, watching them play and listening to their conversations.

Yang said that demonstrating good communication skills holds as much value as proving technical talent. As they assessed players, captains for each respective team looked for people who showed they were good teammates.

“A big thing in gaming is mental fortitude,” Blankenhorn said. “You can’t get sad or upset or angry when something doesn’t go your way, you’ve got to be able to push through it.”

For Yang, the young program is a project far from finished. In the future, he hopes to assemble teams composed of many players recruited from high school.

“I always compare (competitive gaming) to football,” Yang said. “You come in with set plays. You start, things break down, and you have to play on the fly. Whether it’s football or Counter Strike or baseball or Overwatch or Fortnite, it’s all about you having an opponent in front of you and trying to problem solve.”

Published on September 5, 2024 at 12:09 am

Contact Duncan: digreen@syr.edu