Story by Gage Johnson

Sports Editor

gjohnson17@murraystate.edu

While Murray State men’s basketball took to the hardwood for the NCAA Tournament, Murray State’s Esports club was battling Marquette and Florida State in the virtual world.

Two nights before the Racers faced the Golden Eagles in the Round of 64, Sean Mitchuson—the advisor of the the club—reached out to the university in hopes of having a ‘tournament prediction’ League of Legends game.

After getting rosters, the livestream and game settings in place, the five players from each university took each other on in a League of Legends game.

“It’s a 5v5 ‘defend the base’ game,” senior Kyle Greene said. “Player versus player; both teams have a roster of champions to pick through that has 150 now. Each player picks one and the whole objective is to get further and further toward the other side of the map and destroy their structures and eventually their nexus which is the center of their base.”

While they may have split the two games, losing the first against Marquette and winning the second against Florida State, these games are just the beginning for this club.

The club is looking to expand its number of members as well as earn funding to further improve the Esports experience.

This all begins with efforts to create funding and gain the proper equipment, as all the students in the group currently bring their own equipment for each meeting. The group is currently working with the Telecommunications systems management department at Murray State to design a hybrid Esports/laboratory classroom in order to provide the full package for students.

By doing this, interim club president, junior Aaron Nethery thinks they can not only increase the club’s size, but its ability to travel and compete more often at venues like a trip to Cincinnati that the club made last year.

“Because we don’t have the gear here to keep people in one location, it’s hard for us to coach people effectively and get a really solid team together,” Nethery said. “I feel like once we do have that, we’ll be able to go to different venues and physically go to different schools and compete because we’ll have a cohesive team.”

Nethery hopes they can eventually make it to these different venues for competitions, because the team’s trip to Cincinnati is one he’ll never forget.

“We didn’t leave until midnight for Cincinnati so we didn’t arrive until like 5 a.m.,” Nethery said. “Once we got to the actual school, since we didn’t have anywhere to stay they had opened up the lobby so we went in there carrying our desktops. It was like a sleepover you’d have in elementary school. There were hundreds of people in their lobby with their computers and all their stuff set up. It was crazy. They had Riot [the company that developed League of Legends] cards and merch being handed out and people from the actual company there, so that was huge.”

While League of Legends gaming may have created these opportunities, this isn’t the only option available to a club member. They are working on adding games such as Overwatch, Fortnite, Apex Legends and any other game that is popular at a particular time.

With local high schools having Esports teams, Mitchuson believes that by continuing to build upon the foundation of the Esports club, it will help bring students into the school.

“Murray High School has a League of Legends team, Massac County has an Overwatch team,” Mitchuson said. “We want to invite these high schools here, show them this nice playing area, compete against our team and then maybe they’ll think ‘I want to go to Murray State.’”

With collegiate athletics in big tournaments, teams earn compensation for each win or for reaching certain milestones during the season. Since the NCAA has not sanctioned Esports yet, this allows the money to go straight to the students to help the program and also offer scholarships as winnings to students.

“There is a collegiate NACE (National Association of Collegiate Esports) commission that is kind of going through this and they basically have said if you win money, the students get to decide what to do with it,” Mitchuson said. “A lot of these tournaments are scholarship winnings. It’s a free ride for four years just for winning instead of paying Murray State $100,000. It’s more scholarship funding and things like that.”

Murray State is not the only university that has had students dive into the world of online gaming. SIU, UC Irvine and the University of Akron all have venues prepared for tournaments while Ohio State University has begun a medical study on Esports athletes.

Esports is a buzzing industry, with people like Ninja—a YouTube gaming streamer—being named ESPN’s athlete of the year, as well as venues like Madison Square Garden selling out for Esports tournaments.

With an activity like this becoming so prominent nationwide, Mitchuson thinks it should be a priority to further the club at Murray State and provide interested students a pathway to this possible career field.

“It’s extremely important,” Mitchuson said. “Colleges getting involved is another way to build their own brand. It’s important for us to show that we have these interests that newer students that will be coming have already. So it’s really important to build this community that is currently not reaching out enough to the student body, because it’s just not been thought about that much, and growing that into something that students can have Racer pride in it like they would basketball or anything like that.”

Being a YouTube streamer or being a full-time Esports gamer has become a more than viable career in the United States. While Nethery isn’t truly interested in this career path himself, he hopes that they can build the program to give students this chance if they want to chase the opportunity.

“There’s so much potential in this program,” Nethery said. “It’s [Esports] becoming so popular that they’ve even created academies that are basically ‘minor league.’ Just because that’s there and because they still pull from colleges, imagine if we had a venue or program that was so successful that we could tap into that or that they could draw players from. That way maybe people who do want to get into that sort of entertainment business, they can do that through us. The opportunity is definitely there.”

While this career field and club create opportunities for gamers, it has plenty more facets to it than just online gaming.

“By creating this Esports program, we’ve just been talking about players, but there is so much more involved in that,” Mitchuson said. “Journalism, we need broadcasters that can film these events and stream these events, Murray State will need statisticians and mathematic people to keep stats for different players, dieticians, nutritionists—there are all these other fields that get involved with Esports that people don’t really think about. This is a whole new way of looking at their [students] possible job outcome in the sports field through Esports.”

Most of all, for anyone who is interested in the Esports club, Greene and Nethery said students gain a “second family” through the relationships made through the group.

“Me personally when I came in I didn’t know hardly anyone,” Greene said. “Then I started going to the club meetings, I started making friends with a bunch of people and the friends that I made there I’m still friends with and I’m roommates with a lot of them now. I’ve grown such a good friend group through the club here. It’s a really good opportunity to meet people and make friendships and bonds that can stick around for a while.”

The Esports club meets every Friday at 5 p.m. in room 223 of the Collins Industry and Technology building.