Es­ports Com­pletes In­au­gural Sea­son

MISHAWAKA -- While many ath­letic teams across the coun­try have had is­sues com­plet­ing a full sea­son dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­demic, one sport is vir­tu­ally im­mune to this prob­lem. 

Dan Wort, the Bethel Uni­ver­sity es­ports head coach, is grate­ful to have coached a full sea­son. 

“We were in a unique sit­u­a­tion where es­ports is some­thing that … they can still do on­line,” Wort said. “So, there were times through­out the sea­son where … we had kids in quar­an­tine or what­ever, but the na­ture of the sport is such that they can still com­pete.” 

The Bethel es­ports team is com­prised of three sub-teams, one for each of the fol­low­ing games: Su­per Smash Bros., Over­watch and Rocket League. De­spite the mul­ti­ple post­poned matches, Wort said all three sub-teams ac­com­plished the goals he set out for them. 

All three sub-teams each com­peted in at least 15 matches this sea­son. They all also qual­i­fied for the East­ern Col­lege Ath­letic Con­fer­ence play­offs. 

While Wort said his team fol­lowed mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19, his ath­letes were still able to prac­tice and com­pete in quar­an­tine. When Fresh­man Can­non Har­ris had to quar­an­tine, he had no prob­lems ad­just­ing to play­ing in his Oak­wood dorm room. 

“For me, quar­an­tine did not pre­sent any chal­lenges,” Har­ris said. “Things just went on as nor­mal. [I] just did­n’t meet in-per­son when we played in a match.” 

When an es­ports sub-team had a match, most of the ath­letes would meet in the base­ment of the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter or at Elkhart High School. How­ever, quar­an­tined ath­letes had to ei­ther play at home or in their dorm room like Har­ris. 

The es­ports team will move their com­pe­ti­tions to the Ben­dix Arena in South Bend, Ind. start­ing next se­mes­ter. Wort said the Ben­dix Arena will likely be fin­ished in De­cem­ber, so the team will use the space as soon they come back to cam­pus. 

“Even­tu­ally, we need to get to a point where we have kind of a ded­i­cated lab on cam­pus,” Wort said. “Just from a com­pet­i­tive stand­point, all of the other schools that we’re com­pet­ing against hav­ing ded­i­cated es­ports fa­cil­i­ties on cam­pus.” 

One of the biggest chal­lenges the es­ports team faced this sea­son was mea­sur­ing up in skill level against op­po­nents. Even though Har­ris played on his high school es­ports team, he said he no­ticed a big dif­fer­ence in col­lege com­pe­ti­tion. 

“In col­lege, there’s a big dif­fer­ence in skill level,” Har­ris said. “I was­n’t think­ing that Bethel Uni­ver­sity was go­ing to be a part of any­thing too huge be­cause it’s not like a Di­vi­sion I school. But some of tour­na­ment lead­ers were some of the best peo­ple in the world, which was kind of sur­pris­ing to me.” 

Each es­ports ath­lete works on the me­chan­ics of the video game they com­pete in. Like any sport, the more an ath­lete mas­ters the me­chan­ics of their game, the higher their skill level. The me­chan­ics can look very dif­fer­ent, de­pend­ing upon the goal of the game and the in­di­vid­ual ath­lete’s role. 

Fresh­man Rey­lyn Yo­der also no­ticed the dif­fer­ence in skill level be­tween Bethel and their op­po­nents. When Bethel signed Yo­der, he had pre­vi­ously played very lit­tle Over­watch. He played the game over the sum­mer, but he still no­ticed a dis­con­nect in skill. 

“Over­watch is dif­fer­ent from al­most every [first per­son shooter game] you will ever play,” Yo­der said. “You have to be able to run and hit tar­gets con­sis­tently.” 

In some games, like Fort­nite, play­ers must make a com­plete stop if they want to be able to shoot more ac­cu­rately. In Over­watch, shoot­ing ac­cu­racy is not af­fected by the shooter’s move­ment. In­creased shoot­ing ac­cu­racy forces play­ers to keep mov­ing con­stantly to avoid be­ing hit. 

An­other im­por­tant as­pect of Over­watch is com­mu­ni­ca­tion and team chem­istry. Over the course of the sea­son, the Over­watch team had to learn how to com­mu­ni­cate with one an­other. 

“When you get into ac­tual team play and com­pet­i­tive play at higher lev­els, [com­po­si­tion] can be­come very clut­tered very quickly,” Yo­der said. “One per­son will say one thing and then you have to … scream over them and like, ‘Hey, this per­son’s here! I need help!’” 

De­vel­op­ing good team chem­istry and im­prov­ing skill level takes a lot of prac­tice. Orig­i­nally, Wort en­vi­sioned all three sub-teams prac­tic­ing to­gether at the same time. 

Fresh­man Makenna Perry, one of the team’s stu­dent man­agers, said they quickly re­al­ized the whole team could not prac­tice to­gether. Since every ath­lete had such a dif­fer­ent sched­ule, each sub-team had to meet on their own. 

“Since it was the first of­fi­cial sea­son for us, there was a lot of fig­ur­ing things out and get­ting es­tab­lished,” Perry said. “So, there was a lot of strug­gles that we had, but I think it was a re­ally great foun­da­tion or launch pad.” 

While prac­tices did not look the way Wort had en­vi­sioned, the team still formed a bond. Perry said she is close with a few of the ath­letes on the team. She said the team had a lot to look for­ward to this spring with con­tin­u­ing re­la­tion­ships built in the fall. 

“We still have a lot to fig­ure out of course,” Perry said. “But I think that the team’s worked re­ally well to­gether.”