Think of it like basketball. Each player has their individual skill set, and then all five players come together as one to defeat the opponent.
“It comes down to how well you synergize and basic execution,” Chau said.
Tony Chau, a graduate student studying business administration, is one of the League of Legends players on Winthrop’s Esports team. Known as “Saskio” in the gaming world, Chau actually created that nickname for himself while playing RuneScape at nine years old, and it has stuck with him ever since.
“At the time I was watching an anime called Narzo. I was a huge fan of a character on the show called Sasuke. I reworded his name and put in some variations and different letters, and that’s how I came up with Saskio,” Chau said.
For years Chau only played “casual games,” but then he entered high school where a group of friends introduced him to League of Legends.
“I started playing and I really enjoyed the game, so here we are,” Chau said.
Chau considered playing professionally, and he ended up taking a gap year out of high school because he did not know that playing at the collegiate level even existed.
“Someone reached out to me from Maryville University and he said ‘Hey, I’m looking to start up a program in a year, are you down to come out and go to school and play League for free?’” Chau agreed to attend Maryville and began his collegiate esports career.
In 2019, Chau and Maryville came in second place in the International College Cup, which was an improvement on the team’s previous ranking of third place back in 2017. He was also a College League of Legends champion with Maryville in both 2017 and 2019.
On April 25, 2020 Chau had a very memorable afternoon as Winthrop won 2-0 against Maryville.
“There was a lot of drama for that match, but ultimately we beat them and I kind of silenced a bunch of people who were saying how I was the one being carried on that team, but I ended up demolishing them in that match,” Chau said.
While at Maryville for his undergraduate years, a teammate’s mom bought Chau’s entire Esports team Smurfs socks. Although Chau said he is not really superstitious, he does wear that same pair of blue socks for every big tournament.
“Even though I’m not a part of Maryville anymore, I still wear those socks before important matches. I don’t really think of them so much, but it’s just something I do,” Chau said.
Unlike typical sports teams that have had to limit their practice time due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Esports program is still continuing their six to eight hour long practices, but Chau said the team never gets tired of training.
“They just love the game itself, like they don’t even consider it practice, it’s just them playing the game,” Chau said.
Although not all of his teammates are on campus, Chau said it has not been a problem considering all the players would not be able to practice in one room at the same time anyway.
“For this semester I think a lot of people are more prepared because they had all summer to think about how they are going to approach it. The one thing I am a fan of is it’s Esports, it’s collegiate, it’s on the computer, you can still run it,” Chau said.
Aside from competitively playing for Winthrop, Chau also coaches online and recently started writing scripts and recording videos to create his own YouTube and Twitch channels.
“Right now, it’s very stale – the content that is being created [for League of Legends] – and there’s no originality,” Chau said. “I can probably make something here that is completely different, that people haven’t seen in a while, so hopefully it should be able to pop off.”
Chau is already well known in the League of Legends community after he mastered the ability to play the game with his feet.
“I was able to control two champions in a game by myself, which is unheard of. So essentially, I’m like one of four people in the entire world to ever try this strategy and find the most success at it,” Chau said.
Once he graduates from Winthrop, Chau plans to either return home to Vancouver, British Columbia to focus on his gaming channels, or he would like to move to Los Angeles (a city he has had the privilege of visiting twice for collegiate championships) to work for an Esports company.
“Winthrop Esports is definitely a really good program and they have a really good direction — they’re top in the country. I’m really happy that I’m part of this program, and I look forward to seeing what they continue doing even once I’m gone,” Chau said.
Photo courtesy of Winthrop Athletics
