Es­ports Gains Ac­cess to New Fa­cil­ity

MISHAWAKA – Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s Es­ports team has ac­cess to a new prac­tice and com­pe­ti­tion fa­cil­ity: the re­cently-con­structed Ben­dix Arena in South Bend’s Cen­tury Cen­ter. 

Gam­ing is a fairly seden­tary hobby, so the lo­ca­tion is not as im­por­tant as some of the other fac­tors: sys­tem, game, ac­ces­sories and num­ber of play­ers. Com­fort­able seat­ing is pretty im­por­tant as well. How­ever, for most gamers, the lo­ca­tion of their setup is a mi­nor con­cern, es­pe­cially for con­sole play­ers, who re­ally only need space for an out­let or two and a mon­i­tor or TV.  

That be­ing said, spend­ing the Fall 2020 se­mes­ter in the base­ment of the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter, shar­ing the space with Bethel Prime Time equip­ment and mak­ing sure to con­trol our vol­ume lev­els so as not to dis­turb any po­ten­tial classes hap­pen­ing up­stairs dur­ing prac­tice times, were not con­ducive fac­tors to our per­for­mance. De­spite the hum­blest of be­gin­nings for our fledg­ling team, we all man­aged to do pretty well, and we quickly ac­cli­ma­tized to our sur­round­ings: fewer peo­ple trip­ping over green screens, fewer con­trollers left on work­spaces and not a sin­gle noise com­plaint by the end of the sea­son. The place went from feel­ing like we were liv­ing in our par­ents’ base­ment to feel­ing prac­ti­cally cozy. 

How­ever, as cozy as it was, it can­not pos­si­bly com­pare to the LAN cen­ter in the Ben­dix Arena. Eight sta­tions of high-end PC’s, table-top game ta­bles, four flatscreen TVs for con­soles, lights, sound sys­tems and four more flatscreens for spec­tat­ing on­go­ing streams adorn the spa­cious room, which is at least five times the space we had in the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter. Mov­ing from 24-inch mon­i­tors with no built-in au­dio out­put to 50-inch TVs with some of the nicest stereo au­dio I have heard is an in­cred­i­bly pleas­ant up­grade. On top of the won­der­ful screens, we also have some su­per com­fort­able couches, a marked im­prove­ment to the of­fice chairs we had pre­vi­ously used. 

Fur­ther­more, one of the best parts about the Ben­dix LAN cen­ter is the fact that every team mem­ber can not only be pre­sent and to­gether – so­cially dis­tanced, of course – but we can also eas­ily ob­serve and sup­port each oth­er’s game­play. It is not only a tech­no­log­i­cal and space up­grade, but it could very eas­ily im­prove team co­he­sion as well, and I, for one, am un­be­liev­ably ex­cited to make full use of the new fa­cil­ity.