Eastern Esports: With a strong start to the season in Rocket league, the Eagles are still finding their footing in other competitions.

Esports is unique as they are the few teams able to compete during Covid-19 restrictions due to the ability for their competitions to be held entirely online. Members stream their games while competing against other teams remotely from their home campus in order to maintain social
distancing. As the fall semester has started, Eastern’s Esports team has competed in Rocket League, Overwatch and Super Smash Brothers.

Nathaniel (Nate) Hunyh, Cody Fox and Scott Polly started the inaugural season for Esports in a Hearthstone tournament where they began to get their footing as a team. In their first match, they pulled off an upset against RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) and went on to be defeated by Lebanon Valley and lost their second matchup against RIT to end their run in the double elimination tournament.

With a strong start to the season in Rocket League, a game that is similar to soccer, but played with cars pushing a ball in place of players, Eastern’s teams have beaten Robert Morris University, Juniata College, and Penn College ‘B’ while losing to Lackawanna College in their first four matchups of the season. Upcoming match ups include Messiah University, Point Park University, and Lebanon Valley College.

Eastern also is in an Overwatch league where teams compete against each other to complete objectives and reach checkpoints before the other team. The Overwatch competitions for Eastern have had a rough start going 0-8 for their match ups to date, but have also experienced some growth as they won their first rounds and competed closely with teams in matches requiring some overtimes and some game victories. They have one match up remaining against Messiah University on October 26th.

The Super Smash Brothers league, where competitors battle against each other fighting for positions in fighting rings and attempt to ‘smash’ each other from the playing field. So far, competition has been difficult for the Eagles to break into as they have been swept 0-2 in all of their competitions so far this season. In their most recent competition, the Eagles started strong in game two, but were unable to hold off Montgomery Community College. Their final match will take place against Immaculata University on Friday October 30.

Sources: Eastern Athletics