USC ESPORTS WRAP-UP #2
By: Richard Wang
Heya USC Games! This week was a busy week for the competitive teams: From finalizing their team rosters to hosting scrimmages with other schools, everybody is gearing up for this year’s competitive events to start.
EVENTS:
Marvel Rivals: Penn State scrims
This Friday, Arielle, our MR Team Manager, organized a scrimmage against Penn State where our Cardinal (varsity) team won 3-2! Since MR has just entered a new season with new patches just rolling around, the meta has shifted entirely with top heroes like Loki being finally dethroned. While the Cardinal team is relatively new, they showed great potential during the scrim, learning to communicate and synergize. Right now, the team is currently figuring out their final lineup: As they play around with the current meta, they are shifting towards a triple-support centric comp.
Rocket League: Minnesota scrims and Practices in GC
This week, the Cardinal (Varsity) met their match in CSS with an opening against Minnesota, resulting in a hard-fought 3-1 loss; a rough start, but the RL team is only just starting to get into their stride as other exciting match-ups start lining up. Simultaneously, the Gold (JV) team got a chance to run practices this week, winning 4 out of 7 games against Grand Champion ranked teams. The team’s spacing, positions, and rotations proved to be very strong with minimal mistakes when it came to passing, showing strong coordination overall. The teams might be young, but we have high hopes for their upcoming match ups!
LOOKING AHEAD:
NECC Line-ups
The USC Marvel Rivals, Valorant, Overwatch, LoL, Smash, and Rocket League teams will all be participating in the National E Sports Collegiate Conference (NECC) and have just finalized their lineups for the week. NECC hosts over 400 colleges and universities across North America. Stay tuned for our teams’ schedules!
E-Conquest
As the fated USC v UCLA football Conquest week rolls around the corner, so does the annual E-Conquest competition. This is a huge LAN party where players compete against each other in all the current game titles (just because it’s technically casual doesn’t mean we’re gonna go easy). It’s a full-day event that will happen around Thanksgiving week, and currently the E Sports club is in the preliminary stages of planning this huge event!
MORE TEAM INTRODUCTIONS!
Catherine Chen — Rocket League
Welcome back Catherine, our Rocket League manager going on her fourth year! Interestingly enough, despite being a veteran manager, Catherine has only ever played RL once when she was first recruited: She quotes, “I couldn’t hit the ball, so I haven’t tried again since, though I probably should.” Catherine, however, loves watching RL for its fast-paced but easy-to-understand gameplay. This year is the first time we have more than one functioning team: Both the RL Cardinal and Gold teams will be participating in NECC and CRL, with Cardinal also picking up CCS (Collegiate Conference Series). She also plans on sending one team to EGFC, so stay tuned!
Jaden Fragoso — Super Smash Bros
Meet Jaden, a senior studying Intelligence and Cyber Operations and the new manager for our Smash team! For those interested in joining, tryouts will be held at the team’s first event on September 26th (fill out this form: https://forms.gle/iJKYrwPYTdvP6JJT7) and maybe you’ll get a chance to challenge Jaden’s (presumably lethal) Jiggly Puff! Following the 26th, the Smash team will be hosting weekly events every Friday, alternating between freeplay and singles tournaments. These are open to anybody, so join the discord https://discord.gg/xGka4n8XPJ! This year, the competitive team also has collegiate crew battles and possible away tournaments to look forward to!