League of Legends team enters first tournament, brings e-sports to CMU
Students of the League of Legends team compete in a tournament in Pearce Hall October 10, 2015.
Central Michigan University students competed in the Collegiate Star League's League of Legends tournament on Saturday Oct. 10, making it the first time CMU has participated in college level e-sports.
“League of Legends,” released in 2009 by developer Riot Games, is a multiplayer online battle arena game that consists of two teams of five players. Each player controls a champion with their own unique abilities to compete against the opposing team’s champions and destroy the enemy nexus deep in the other team’s territory, all while protecting their own nexus.
Senior Russell Iglehart, coordinator for the CMU Gold team, and president of the CMU League of Legends club, said he was happy to see e-sports gain a foothold at CMU.
“It feels really good to finally have an e-sports team set up,” he said. “It lets people who are not athletic nurture their competitive spirit.”
CMU Gold said they were “very excited,” and proud to be the first competitors in an e-sport on behalf of the university. The team practices up to four times a week and spent seven hours training on Friday before the match.
The game quickly become one of the most popular competitive games worldwide. In 2013 the League of Legends World Championship was viewed by 32 million people online, making it the most watched e-sports event ever.
The tournament, managed by Collegiate Star League on behalf of “League of Legends” developer Riot Games, consisted of two round robin tournaments. The first part divided teams into groups of eight based on geographical location while the second part was based on seeding.
Teams competed in best two out of three matches. After the second round robin the best teams will move on to the playoffs in an elimination tournament. The winning team of the playoffs, in March, will receive $20,000 in scholarship funds for each player.
The tournament is split into three divisions, Division 1 for competitive teams, Division 2 for secondary teams, and Division 3 for teams that have a ranking of gold or lower in the game. CMU League of Legends has a team for each division. CMU Gold competed in Division 1, CMU Maroon in Division 2 and CMU White in Division 3.
The teams consisted of members from the CMU League of Legends club, an official RSO at CMU. The CMU Gold team went up against the UMM Cougars from University of Minnesota – Memphis on Saturday, winning the match 2-0.
Competitive Manager Drew Giffin, a freshman, said he felt confident of his team’s chances, saying the only team they had to watch out for was next week’s competition, SCG at Georgia Southern.
Giffin said he plans to have next week’s game streamed on Twitch, assuming the other team gives their consent. The team said they hoped “League of legends would gain popularity on campus."
“I think it will grow in proportion to e-sports,” said Sam Heller, a player for CMU Gold.
CMU Maroon did not compete this week, but will play next week against University of Tennessee-Knoxville. CMU White lost their first game against Langara College 0-2 and will compete against Ithaca College next week.
The tournament will run throughout the year with a break in December for final exams. Playoffs are scheduled to begin March 5 of 2016.
