E-sports go varsity

The play-by-play might go: “Now attacking in the jungle, the legend of the league in the League of Legends, the pride of Pittsburgh and a master of disaster, Skidmore’s own…Coffeegoat.”

Coffeegoat? This isn’t mainstream sports, is it? No, it’s League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle game, and the handle used by gamer Dan Petricca ’15. He was this year’s president for the seven competitors and 30 casual players making up Skidmore’s varsity e-sports team, recently chartered as an official student club. Skidmore is somewhat new to e-sports, but at least one university has begun offering athletics scholarships for e-sports players, and the pro LOL championship in Los Angeles sold out the Staples Center in five minutes.

Skidmore’s club started as a way for gamers to play in a positive social environment. That mission remains true, but then some members got good—so good that Skidmore’s LOL team competes in the top collegiate division. In match play, Petricca notes, “we are up there with bigger schools like RPI or UConn. While we lost to both, we didn’t get destroyed. It’s really cool that a small liberal arts school was able to hold its own against a university with 30,000 students.”

The members often practice individually, by loading the game and joining others who happen to be online—Jay Sobel ’17 likens it to pick-up basketball. He says, “These games are decided by individual skill and, to a lesser extent, the ability of five anonymous players to cooperate with one another using only text.”

For team practices, they can usually come together only a couple of hours per week. Players are each in their own rooms or apartments but connected by Skype, so their gaming benefits from plenty of team communication. Also, their coach can watch and advise them how to use their individual strengths to help the team. Sobel reports, “Our coach is a senior in high school in New York City who goes by the username Bananas for Sale. There’s something fundamentally e-sportsy about having a high school kid nobody’s even met coaching the team of a liberal arts college.”

Club members also volunteer at the Saratoga Springs Public Library, mentoring high school students in multiplayer gaming and being sure to instill the code of sportsmanship they adhere to. They acknowledge that the anonymity of online gaming can result in some pretty offensive trash-talking; the major e-sports governing bodies levy fines and suspensions for offensive behavior. But Skidmore’s team sticks to its core principles of mutual respect. The very first line of the club charter describes its goal “to create a club which promotes cooperation, connection and leadership amongst members of the Skidmore online gaming community.”

Eddie Gemson ’15 got involved in the club just this year, as a senior. He was attracted by its strong community spirit and interest in improving players’ skills. With a background in competitive tennis, Gemson applied the same principles he used for boosting his athleticism on the court to advancing his hand-eye reflexes on the video screen. He says, “I’d watch a Roger Federer and try to duplicate some of his movements on the court. And for LOL, I see the skills of the professional gamers and hope to carry some of that over to my own gaming.”

With a commitment to both fun and success, it seems Skidmore’s e-sports team can only improve over time. The old joke might have to be updated: How do you get to the Staples Center? Practice.