As the spring semester draws to a close, the esports teams are only getting started, with both the Rocket League team and the League of Legends team preparing for their postseason run.
After falling short at the College Rocket League (CRL) qualifiers, the Rocket League team was unable to secure a spot in this year’s CRL tournament. Their loss came at the hands of the University of Ohio after a very close series.
“Since we were coming from the losers bracket, we had to win two best-of-fives instead of one, so we beat them in the first best-of-five 3-0, and then the second best-of-five we were up 2-0, [but] they ran it back and reverse swept us,” said head coach Josh Sides.
“We’ve won a couple smaller tournaments here and there throughout the semester with the Rocket League team. We didn’t quite make CRL because one of our players is a pro player and had a match on the day of the CRL qualifiers, but we’re doing PlayVs, which is the other big collegiate Rocket League tournament out there,” said Sides.
The League of Legends team will also be seeing some postseason action after only losing one game during the entire regular season.
“We ran through all the regular season matches very unblemished aside from one week,” said Sides. “We had one of our players who had to miss the match that week so we had to play with a sub.”
Although the team lost to the University of Houston during the regular season, it didn’t stop them from sweeping them, along with every other team that they faced during the College League of Legends (CLoL) South Region tournament.
“We were hoping to meet them in the finals to get revenge,” Sides said. “We got our 3-0 win to UCF in the quarterfinals, 3-0 win against George Mason in the [semifinals], and met up with Houston in the finals and with all of our players available we 3-0’d them as well. It was a really fun tournament.”
As the team prepares for their postseason run, Sides said that they hope to have a strong showing.
“Most people don’t consider the south to be a strong conference. Most people consider it the weakest or the second weakest, but we’re hoping to make some noise in the tournament and kind of prove that a team can come out of the south and get it done,” he said.
Looking ahead to next semester, the Overwatch team is preparing to rebuild its roster. Senior Trevor “Qwickzzz” Groshell graduates after this semester and several players on the team have moved from Overwatch to Valorant (a game that Winthrop will see its first collegiate action in this coming fall.)
Postseason schedules for the Rocket League and League of Legends teams have yet to be released, though they are expected to be out within the next week. Make sure to follow @WinthropEsports on Twitter and @winthropesport on Instagram to stay up to date with the teams and their postseasons.
