WILLIAMSPORT — Lycoming College’s eSports and Gaming Club recently wrapped up its fall ’21 season in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) with much success, crowning its first ever ECAC champion, Mo Terry ’22.
With much to look forward to — a brand new arena outfitted with gaming PCs, console setups, a projector for video reviews, and a space for streaming matches — the club hopes to see new members in the spring semester.
“The amount of work the players and regular club members put in for this to happen has been amazing,” Joshua Gooch, head advisor and assistant athletic trainer, said. “We are young, but resourceful, and now with the new arena starting to come together, I hope we can attract new students to join us.”
This marks only the second year that the club has competed in ECAC, a competition that spans over 150 schools and 11 different titles, with Division 1, 2, and 3 teams all competing together. Eager to start the competition, the club on campus expanded from competing in two titles in its first year to competing in five titles this year, which includes League of Legends, Madden, NBA2K, Super Smash Brothers, and Valorant. Gooch elaborated, “The focus was on taking a leap forward as a club, which is exactly what happened.”
Four teams advanced to the playoffs with Terry, competing on the Madden ’21 team, and Matt Michenfelder, competing on the NBA2K team. Both finished top in the regular season standings for their respective titles and went on to win three separate player of the week and three separate rookie of the week awards.
On the accomplishments of others, Gooch said, “Not to be outshined was the Navy Super Smash Bros. team, building upon last season’s success to position themselves as an ECAC spotlight matchup in week five. This meant their matchup was streamed live on Twitch by the conference along with commentators.”
The regular season ended with Terry taking the conference title in Madden ’21 on the PlayStation 4. In the final matches, Terry had the advantage as his opponent from Kean University was one he had already defeated during the regular season.
“Winning the ECAC Madden championship was more than just a win and a trophy to me,” said Terry. “I gained a new family with the eSports club. I would like to give special thanks to my coaches Joshua Gooch and Joe Wolfe and to the whole Lycoming eSports family. Because of them, I was able to represent myself in a different facet rather than in just basketball and school.”
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