Fast-growing varsity Esports program, gaming lab put WSU on the map
Cameron Tredway knew about collegiate Esports powers such as the University of North Texas and the University of California, Irvine. He didn’t plan on competing against them.
Tredway’s place in the world of competitive Esports changed quickly last semester, and he is pleased to see Wichita State jumping in to a growing fusion of sports and entertainment with its new varsity team.
“It’s very, very accessible for people to be able to watch Esports these days,” said Tredway, a junior industrial engineering major from Wichita. “It’s spreading very quickly. Even ESPN has been airing the Overwatch league on some of their channels.”
One moment, Tredway played Overwatch with the Shocker Gaming Club. A few discussions later, he played on Wichita State’s varsity Esports team under the direction of Tyler Levesque.
“I had just heard there was a gaming club and I wanted to play with them,” Tredway said. “All of a sudden, Tyler comes in and says, ‘Hey, guys, I’m your coordinator for the semester . . . and you’re entered in two tournaments.”
Levesque, Wichita State’s Esports coordinator, moved fast during his first semester, putting together two teams and arranging practices on the fly. When his Esports students return in the fall, the program will look and feel much different.
“Schools with Esports programs have been around for a while now, maybe three, four, five years,” Levesque said. “One of the first lessons we learned was that people take this very seriously.”
The varsity Esports room in the Heskett Center is outfitted with seven Cybertron gaming towers (Core i7 processors with RTX 2070 graphics cards), Corsair mechanical keyboards and Respawn gaming chairs, new black and gray paint and TV screens for video reviews.
“The students have the ability to come in and sit down, study, go over game-play,” Levesque said. “We talk about, ‘This is where you were positioned on the map. You should have been here. This is what happened.’”
Read the full article at https://www.wichita.edu/about/wsunews/news/2019/07-july/esports.php