Heroes of the DormThe image that this event brings to most is the image of the victorious team hoisting a trophy celebrating their recent victory.This is just one image of millions that are created each and every year and fails to tell even a fraction of the story of hardship, devotion, and friendship that College Heroes of the Storm eSports brings. This is a problem that I seek to solve through this weekly column to get a sneak peek into the life of a College eSport player, manager, and team.What I hope this blog will do is be helpful to those looking to get into College eSports, Hots or not, or just provide an interesting look into a college esport program. This week, I will just be giving more of an overview of the team and eSports in general at my University, while week by week I will be focusing on a different aspect of the team, from tryouts to practices and competitions, in order to get a snapshot of how the team operates and to perhaps help someone form a team or program of their own.-The beautiful campus I call homeTo give some background, first off, hi! My name is Zachary Helberg and I am the Manager/Support Player of the University of Arkansas Heroes of the Storm Team. I am currently a Sophomore Business Student here at the U of A and second year Heroes of the Dorm Captain/Manager/Player. Chances are, if you have somehow seen our team play, you would more likely know me as my Battletag of Deadlatin. I enjoy reading, have a crippling addiction to Mountain Dew, and yes I enjoy playing Hots.Enough about me though, in order to get a better picture of the team, one must get a sense of eSports at the University of Arkansas. To say it is small would be an understatement, it would best be described as a cute baby in both strength and amount of people who care about it. As it stands to my knowledge, this is the second year that Uark Esports as a unified organization with teams officially competing under its banner. Last year, the organization had three teams under its banner in some form of fashion, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, and League of Legends. This year, we have expanded to other games and are constantly looking to more. However, in this infancy comes a large amount of problems (mainly funding and recognition) that is a daily struggle. The biggest problem that directly ties to Heroes is the lack of a gaming culture on campus that has either been captured by the Esports program or does not exist (probably a combination of both).-Our record last year, not bad until you realize that four of them were via forfeitTo go back to Hots specifically, on a superficial level, the team is far behind the competition. The team has a MMR of about High Gold/Low Platinum which puts us leagues behind the competition. Because of this fact, the team practices almost daily (5 days a week plus an optional extra day) to try and close this gap, but I will talk about this later. The players on the team are mostly Freshmen/Sophomores of a variety of degrees and are more or less your average college nerds that just happen to play Heroes of the Storm. We also have a coach who does some Vod reviews for us every week to try and get an outside view of how to improve.I hope that this column so far has set a solid enough general picture to get an idea moving forward of the team to understand how each topic applies to my team. Keep in mind, that each college team is different and this blog is just one of literally hundreds of Heroes of the Storm college teams' experience. It is my plan to update this blog every Monday, but it may be pushed back if I have a particularly busy day. If you have any questions or feedback (as this is my first time doing this kind of thing), feel free to message me and I will try to get back to you as quick as possible. Thanks for reading!Deadlatin