Video game

Collegiate Esports champion Harrisburg University scoring more points as host of national convention – PennLive


For years, Soames Lovett-Darby’s parents told him to get off the computer.

He played too many video games, they said, and needed to find something else to pass the time. But Lovett-Darby didn’t listen. And years later, much to his family’s surprise, it paid off.

Lovett-Darby, who was born and raised in Canada, is now at Harrisburg University on a full-ride scholarship to play video games on the school’s varsity Esports team. He helped lead his squad — reigning national champions — to a victory against Boise State on Thursday at the national collegiate Esports convention.

“I’m extremely lucky,” he said. “I’m getting paid to go to school and play games.”

The three-day event, hosted annually by the National Association of Collegiate Esports, is being held at Harrisburg University this year and is expected to draw more than 400 attendees. It features panels, speeches, gaming exhibitions and coaches and players from more than 100 schools — many of whom are looking to develop their own varsity programs.

The convention gives a boost to Harrisburg’s economy at an important time, said Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste. With the legislature out of session, the city doesn’t typically see many visitors — but the Hilton and Crown hotels were nearly booked as of Thursday, he said.

“That’s directly accountable to this event,” Haste said. “It’s a big win for us.”

Last year, the county invested $25,000 from hotel taxes into the university’s Esports program and a national tournament. Haste is hopeful this year’s convention will get Harrisburg on the map in the gaming community and draw a new crowd of tourists and students to the city.

NACE has only been around for about three years, but more than 150 schools across the country have registered varsity Esports teams, said Executive Director Michael Brooks.

The Storm, Harrisburg University’s team, is the school’s first — and only — varsity sport. In many ways, it’s like any other game, program director Chad Smeltz said.

Coaches recruit top gamers from across North America and hold tryouts for open positions, and players have weekly workout sessions where they lift weights and play soccer or basketball.

They have to attend study halls and maintain a minimum GPA to remain on the team. And just as it’s uncommon for a college athlete to play more than one sport, it’s rare for any Harrisburg Esports player to specialize in more than one of the three games the school offers: Overwatch, League of Legends and Hearthstone.

Storm players focus on communication and leadership skills, Smeltz said. Esports is a fast-growing community, he added — and one that has benefits far beyond what most people realize.

“All the kind of stuff that goes into a team sport like basketball or lacrosse or football — it’s essentially the same concept,” he said.

That philosophy has worked out well for the team. They went undefeated in the 2019 season with a 33-0 record, and won a series of titles that culminated the national ESPN championship for Overwatch. Thursday’s match against Boise State wasn’t even close.

For Brooks, video games are a way for people to connect. He grew up in a military family, meaning he moved frequently and couldn’t hold down a social group. StarCraft, a multi-player science-fiction game, became a way for him to stay in touch with the friends he made as a kid.

He remembers staying up late and sneaking downstairs to watch Korean gaming competitions were streamed on TV. If he could angle the satellite just right, he could catch the proper channel — and even though he didn’t understand a word the players said, he was hooked.

The Esports community is often laughed at and criticized, Brooks said, by people who say it can’t possibly compare to traditional athletics. But he tries to take those comments in stride — and hopes events like the NACE convention can help change some minds and grow the industry.

“This is working. It’s working really well, which is surprising, given how many stumbling blocks we have,” he said. “Other schools should be interested in this — but we need to get information to them.”



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