WVU E-sports team heads to the national finals in Texas

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va (WDTV) - The WVU E-sports team was started in Oct. 2021.

The team is in Dallas Texas for the red bull campus clutch E-sports tournament.

This is the national finals, and the team is competing against 13 of the best teams across the nation.

If they win, they will go to the global finals in Brazil.

Josh Steger is the WVU E-sports Director.

He said it’s an incredible experience for the team.

“Right now, we are competing for the best team in the United States. The opportunity to go and represent the United States almost like an Olympic team basically in Brazil, and all the other schools from different countries is going to be a really incredible experience that you just can’t get anywhere, or most people never have an opportunity to even compete in something like this, and it’s just amazing they’re doing it for videogames at this point.”

Steger said they have four games currently Madden, Valorent, Rocket League, and Call of Duty.

The red bull tournament is only playing Valorent. It’s a competitive 5 vs 5 game where you attack or defend your side from other players.

He said it’s an extremely long process to prepare for.

“From a competitive standpoint, it’s really getting all the right people together to form a team and make sure they understand the mission goals and the ins and outs of the game. From an administrative standpoint it’s really getting the campus behind us, and the faculty members, and the provost office, and let them know hey E-sports is here and we’re here to stay.”

Steger said they have 21 players on their varsity team and around 800 to 1000 on their club team.

He said they’re looking to expand the team and are even looking at making an all-girls team.

Along with that, they want to bring more people in for the E-sports major and minor.

“Hopefully the people that come and they support the esports team they’ll also take part in our minor and major that we’re building on campus. We’re doing a really good job at bringing in industry folks, and they are giving students literally job hands-on experience through the classroom work, and that is almost non-existent in this space at this time, and so we are just hoping to be the pioneer of what E-sports is at collegiate.”

The hope is to build spaces on campus for students to use for multiple purposes in the future.

Steger said you can stream the team at the tournament from their twitter account to watch linked here.

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