MARION, Ind. - This week, the Esports team had plenty of regular season and preseason matches for the Wildcat faithful fans!
To start the week, the Wildcats Valorant team played in their preseason NECC activation tournament. While the games don't count towards their record, they do help to get them placed in an NECC division. After last year's Navigators Division National Championship, the team was under consideration for moving up a division. While divisions have not yet been released, the team went 2-1, narrowly losing their last match. We'll see where they get placed once the NECC releases the results this weekend!
The Wildcats Smash Bros. team had their first match as a program on Wednesday against Mount Union. Freshman standout Josiah "Luigiboi30" Bowers was able to take 5 stocks for the wildcats, but they ended up losing in a close 2-0.
The NECC preseason tournament for the Rocket League team was also this week. On Thursday, they got their first taste of collegiate play, going 2-0 and becoming one of two teams to win all 6 games in their tournament. We are also awaiting their placement results, which will be released before the regular season on Thursday night.
Finally, Saturday was a busy day with both Smash Bros. and Valorant playing Saturday morning. Smash Bros. faced a tough GLEC team in Shawnee State and unfortunately lost 0-2. The Wildcats Valorant team took on Heidelberg University. They won the first map, Lotus, and had a lot of momentum going into a 7-1 lead on the second map, Ascent. However, Heidelberg stormed back and took the map 13-8. Despite a late comeback on map 3, Haven, Heidelberg sealed the 2-1 win over the Wildcats. En "Dice" Milbourn had a quietly strong day, getting a combined average combat score of 708 across all three maps.
The Wildcats will be back in action next week! Here is what next week's schedule looks like:
Monday -
Valorant NECC week 1, time and opponent TBD
Tuesday -
Smash Bros NECC week 1 vs. Northern Kentucky
Thursday -
Rocket League NECC week 1, time and Opponent TBD
Saturday -
Smash Bros GLEC week 3 vs. Tiffin,
Valorant GLEC week 3 vs. Baldwin and Wallace
As always, you can catch the action on twitch.tv/IWU_Esports!
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