Dust particles were sleeping peacefully across the silicon hills and valleys of the Varsity League of Legends computers before cooling fans blasted them into oblivion during last week’s practice. There won’t be much of a transition period though, as the team launches directly into two back-to-back matches today, with a possibility of a third on Monday to kick off the season
Today USC plays San Diego State in the Collegiate Star League (CSL) tournament at 12:00p.m. PST, and later plays University of Texas at Austin in the first round of the Arizona State GSV tournament at 2:00p.m.
This weekend’s matches consist of external tournaments run by independent bodies rather than the College League of Legends (CLoL) regional tournament run by Riot – the publishers of the game
CLoL, a swiss-style tournament where teams with the most wins in their assigned group advance to the next round, officially starts on Monday, but USC won’t play a match until next Saturday the 25th. These tournaments have solid prizes accompanying them with the Collegiate Star League boasting a $50,000 ($20,000 first place) sum, while Arizona State’s GSV tournament will deal a total of $20,000, ($10,000 first place).
UT Austin should be the more challenging match. Their team won the South CLoL regional championship last year and boast playoff appearances in years prior, but that’s not the only reason for the match’s importance.
There’s also some personal history involved for USC’s coach Joe Jacko, himself a former college League player. He still plays too, ranking just outside the top 300 players in the game at Diamond 1.
“I came from Virginia Tech and I played against the guys at Austin a lot, that match is kind of important to me just because I played them before as a player and now to play them again as a coach is kind of cool,” he said. Jacko later added that “I watch them play and I really want to play, because I’m like man, I could…" after sighing at imagined possibilities he continued, "I know what I would do, but I got to describe it the best I can and hope they execute.”
If they win the match against Austin, they inch ever closer to a piece of the thick $20,000 prize pool beckoning from the golden fields beyond the playoffs but not before an encounter with the League of Legends behemoth of Maryville University in the second round. Maryville slashed and burned their way through last year’s competition, winning GSV and two other tournaments. In total they won 3 out of the 4 national tournaments last year.
At least USC’s been practicing.
Schedules didn’t align over the break, so the team wasn’t able to all get into one server. “We had a student going back to China, we had a student going to Texas,” said Jacko, but the players adhered to a practice schedule and were encouraged to send over recordings of their gameplay for analysis.
There’s been time to practice and scrimmage over the course of this past week, so “I’d say right now the team is feeling pretty good” said Brandon “Gunning” Gunning, a sophomore and AD Carry for the team. “We ended last semester by winning our show match against UCLA, and we’re excited to come into this year’s CLoL season and hopefully make playoffs.”
Jacko mirrored Gunning’s ambitions, hopeful for a playoff spot in CLoL as well as decent placement in the CSL, if not the GSV tournament.
So far USC is 5-1 in the CSL tournament which started last October, and the team is looking to keep their record solid for a playoff spot or something even higher.
Jacko said that in these first few matches, “The thing that concerns me the most, especially in CLoL, is that we’re playing as a team, and that we have our game-plan, the first couple matches are generally highest seed against lowest seed, so they go pretty easily, but what’s important is that we don’t give away free objectives... make mistakes we shouldn’t be making.”
If all goes well, and the team gets far enough in the coming tournaments, Gunning said he’d “probably go buy some kbbq with my teammates and then go buy a new computer probably.”