URBANA — What is Illini Esports coach Dawid Bycul stressing to his players ahead of this weekend’s tournament?
Pushing the tempo. Keeping good spacing. Constant communication. Stuff you might hear in your typical Brad Underwood sideline huddle.
In fact, the closest thing that Bycul, who coaches the University of Illinois’ unofficial “League of Legends” team, can use for comparison is that the video game is like “basketball without any breaks.”
Except there’s 120 magical characters to choose from to destroy an enemy base. And the Illini’s coach is a 20-year-old rising junior.
This weekend, a UI e-sports team will be competing in one of the first major in-person tournaments since the pandemic started.
The Gateway Legends Collegiate Invitational, hosted in St. Louis, invited the top 16 collegiate “League of Legends” teams in the country to compete for a $10,000 prize pool.
Unlike much of their competition, Illini Esports is competing without major backing from the university. Schools like Maryville University, which is hosting the tournament, have full-ride scholarships and loads of funding for elite student gamers.
Though the Illini may not have a varsity team or a full professional staff, they’re embracing the underdog mentality.
“We aren’t there to perform like Maryville or one of the scholarship schools. No player’s going to get cut because of this tournament,” Bycul said. “That mentality is very dangerous for the enemy team.”
Different kind of sportE-sports is competitive video gaming, usually involving amateur or professional players competing in organized tournaments.
With the aid of live- streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube, it has ballooned to a billion-dollar industry.
Illini Esports is one of the biggest student organizations on campus. There are over 200 staff and players focused on 16 games, and about 3,000 students that roam the club’s chatroom on Discord, said club President A.J. Taylor.
The organization started in 2015, when multiple gaming clubs on campus decided to merge under one umbrella.
In Fall 2017, the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning worked to establish academic tie-ins with the club. A number of faculty have begun partnering with Illini Esports, bringing in students for different gaming-focused courses and research.
In Spring 2020, Technology Services equipped the center’s Innovation Studio in the Armory Building with gaming and virtual-reality computers for e-sports teams to use.
Taylor, a third-year Ph.D. candidate at the UI, has embedded himself with the school organization for six years, coaching the “League of Legends” team for five and coming on as president during the pandemic.
Despite being completely student-run, the teams Illini Esports rolls out in different games are almost all among the collegiate top 15, Taylor said.
Student players may invest 20 to 35 hours a week practicing their game with their team, or more if they’re trying to play professionally.
“When I was coaching them, I myself was putting in probably 35 to 40 hours a week,” Taylor said. “Between reviewing our games, watching our own games, creating drafts and researching, playing the game, and then coaching individually for each of the players or whatever else that they needed.”
That doesn’t include the players’ solo practice, or balancing gameplay with school and social lives.
But tournament rewards are bountiful and only growing as years go on.
An Illini Esports team for the game “Smite” won $40,000 at an Atlanta tournament in 2018, after having its travel and lodging expenses covered.
A two-person Illini “Fortnite” team won $10,000 per player in a previous tournament as well, Taylor said.
The biggest tourneys can dole out hundreds of thousands of dollars to top-placing teams, and there are a growing number of businesses employing professional gamers to compete for their teams.
UI student Michael Zou, known by the gamer tag “Qwacker,” is currently contracted for an amateur team, and a previous coach was picked up by Evil Geniuses, a professional gaming company.
University outreach
There are some silly hardships that come with a student-run competitive video-gaming team.
Like when three of your youngest players are playing in a UI dorm, and the fire alarm goes off three times during an official tournament match.
“We had to pause every single time that that happens because they have to be evacuated, they have to come out,” Taylor said. “They have to wait the 15 minutes to have to get the all-clear, they go back in and then somebody decides to burn bacon or some stupid freshman thing like that.”
With the competitive level and size of Illini Esports, club organizers are trying to obtain more solid financial support from the university, with limited success.
“In my presidency alone, we’ve reached out to three facets of the university, and every single time they’re super excited,” Taylor said. “They love the idea. They want to get involved in e-sports. We’re amazing, we’re wonderful, we’re cool
“We follow up with emails and conversations. And from there, I will never hear back from them.”
Smaller schools at this weekend’s tournament, like Maryville; the University of California, Irvine; Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania; and Winthrop University in South Carolina have maintained advantages in the e-sports world with early investments, but bigger schools are catching on.
Big Ten schools are escalating their programs: Ohio State University has an official e-sports arena, while the University of Michigan received a $4 million gift in April to launch an official e-sports program and professorship.
Prospective students know that gaming scholarships are a budding option.
“Every single week I get at least 15 to 20 different emails or contacts through social media that are saying ‘Hi, I am blank-blank from some high school or maybe from another country, I’m looking to do e-sports at your university, do you offer scholarships,’” Taylor said. “And I have to say no.”
The hope is that continued performance will further win over UI officials.
“If we have consistent results at tournaments with no university backing as a completely player-run organization, the school has no excuses to ignore us,” Bycul said. “It’d be amazing if we could get athletic support, because that means that we have the resources to compete with other teams, making our own merchandise or getting player jerseys.”
The Gateway Invitational Tournament begins at noon today and runs through Sunday at Ballpark Village next to Busch Stadium as part of Fair St. Louis festivities. Viewers can watch live on the Nerd Street Gamers’ Twitch channel at twitch.tv/nerdstreetlol.
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