As you may have heard, Winthrop University officially has a Division I esports team. But what you may not know is that there is a gaming club here at Winthrop that helped start the esports dream. However, the six players on Winthrop’s esports team were all brought in from other schools.
Jeremy Pixley, a Winthrop alum from the class of 2018, said, “Actually, I’ve always been aware of it. My friends (RJ Layug, Jahiym Staten, Jacob Campos) actually helped start the talk a few years ago about possibly bringing esports to Winthrop. It was my junior year, I believe. They would bounce ideas around our friend group and meet with officials and higher ups at the university. I found out that it became a legit thing literally as I was graduating, unfortunately. It was great and exciting to see it actually unfold and become a reality. [It was] something we talked about a lot.”
Being part of the Competitive Gaming Club, each of the members had a similar story as to why they play and what they love about playing. “I’m tied, the competition is amazing, I’m ridiculously competitive but also our community. I’ve meet good friends by just playing video games,” said freshman mathematics major Cj Wiley.
“Gaming has always been one of my favorite hobbies since I was a child. It’s like an escape from real life to me, where you have no boundaries on what you want to do or be. You can be a dragon or a ninja or a soldier. It’s very relaxing and a great escape from everyday life,” Pixley said.
“Smash [Bros] has changed my life completely. Without it, my life would’ve been terrible. I’ve met an infinite amount of amazing people, and I’ve gotten a chance to travel around the world, and all of these people in this room [that] I know because of the game I play, they’re all some of my best friends,” sophomore computer science major Matthew Mushower said.
Since the gamers club has so much passion about playing esports and members have said that they helped to pioneer the idea of having esports at Winthrop, it has raised questions about why they did not get a shot at being part of the university’s first official team.
“We heard about it at the end of last year, and we were really excited about it–the potential of us being brought into that, getting official recognition or money and stuff–and we talked to them, Coach Sides, and I really like him so far, and I feel like the fact that they’re looking to expand is really good for us too and that we can work together a lot,” Wiley said.
So what happened to open tryouts and replacing anyone in the esports practice room at any given time? “I talked to Coach Sides, and as far as I know, from my cognition of how things went, no one tried out for the team, everyone was just recruited from places like Chicago and around the country,” Mushower said.
“If they really did do that [host open tryouts] we [The Gaming Club] would’ve known. At least, the council would’ve known, so I doubt that they did,” said sophomore criminology major Brooke Bordner.
“The whole process was really ambiguous and not detailed whatsoever. It was like ‘hey, we’re getting an esports league,’ and that’s basically all we knew. And no one really told us much about it at all,” said junior music major Matthew Howard.
“That isn’t honestly what I thought the program would be about. I thought it would build on top of what was already set in place at WU through our Winthrop Competitive Gaming Club which I was a part of and helped put time into throughout undergrad,” Pixley said. “ The interest for the program was already there. Training up our students who have an interest and hope to compete at that collegiate level of esports from the ground up was what I was expecting, but I kinda see both sides of the spectrum,” Pixley said. “The program brought in some of last years’ best players to our school in hopes of building interest for future recruit prospects and also maybe one day using our very own resources on top of that, in hopes of building a legacy for our esports team. I understand that. Not what I visioned, but I get it. I am excited to see how our esports team performs and will cheer them on wholeheartedly, and I am also very excited for the future of esports here at WU. I wish them nothing but the best. Go Eagles!”
Be sure to watch out for alerts from Winthrop’s Competitive Gaming Club about their monthly competitions of Smash Bros and Mario Kart.
Photo: Jospeh Calamia/ The Johnsonian
