Specialized

The spring of my college graduation, my collegiate Overwatch team achieved it's highest ranking in the program's seven year history. A student organized venture, largely unsupported and unfunded by the university, we were able to achieve a high ranking in the official spring collegiate tournament, beating scholarship teams and high ranked individual players.

Background

Blizzard Entertainment, an Irvine,CA company behind popular games including World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, originally released Overwatch on May 24,2016. Releasing to massive success as a genre-bending 6v6 hero shooter, it combined the aim intensive nature of games like Call of Duty with the cooldown abilities and strategy of League of Legends and Dota. The game hit 20 million players in under 5 months, and these numbers only continued to balloon. By November of the same year, Blizzard announced a franchised league, with 12 team owners buying in for $20 million each. In this league, top players were salaried to the tune of >100k, and by 2020, the highest paid player in the league was salaried for over $300,000.

I say this not that it has any relevance on my life, but to add an amount of legitimacy to this game, to this hobby which I dedicated serious time to in college. Time that resulted in what I consider success and, more importantly, lessons in performance and teamwork.

My Journey

Early Seasons

In Fall of 2022, Overwatch servers were shut down, and Overwatch 2 was released to take its place. Thinning the game down to 5v5, the change streamlined the game and made communication via an IGL, or in game leader, much easier. This was the first season in which I tried out for my school's team, and ended up placed on JV in a support role. Although we did nothing of note my inaugural season, it was nice to get an intro the community, including the then president of the gaming club. These team relationships would become important in my next season.

By Spring 2023, I had gotten a bit better at the game, and had acquired the unique experience of playing in an organized team. This season, I advocated that I be placed in the tank role instead of support. In Overwatch 1, it was required to have 2 supports, 2 damage characters and 2 tanks. In OW2, a tank was removed to make the game 5v5, and it consequently made the tank role much more important. Now, there was only one player on the team that had the the outsized resources of a tank role, and this led to a more streamlined team game where what your tank did, and where they were, mattered a lot more. Still, at this JV level, individual skill and mechanics mattered a lot, and it was with some practice that my teammates and I were able to complete our season undefeated. You can see this by selecting Spring 2023 under event history here.

More Friction, and More Solutions

Just like my first season on JV, my inaugural season on Varsity was largely uneventful. After being encouraged by my teammates to tryout for Varsity, alongside several of my JV teammates not playing after Spring season due to other commitments, I tried out and was placed as an alternate for the Varsity Team. Note that while we were a school that did not offer scholarship for Esports, we had over 37,000 students in our undergraduate, graduate and professional student body. This meant a large talent pool to choose from, and helped us find

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