The NC State League of Legends esports team recently solidified itself as a top-eight team in the nation and qualified for the 2019 College Championship at the LCS Battle Arena in Los Angeles, California.
With over 350 teams competing to reach the largest college esports championship in North America, NC State is one of eight finalists hoping to be crowned the best collegiate LoL team in the country.
“We knew we had the talent this year to win the south [regional] and do well overall, but there were definitely times during the season that we surprised ourselves with some of the competition we were able to beat,” said senior jungler Stephen “Pluckin Penguin” Downhower. “Making it to LA is pretty crazy because I don’t know if anybody really expected to make it to LA.”
As esports continues to build momentum in mainstream media and gain acceptance, some of the largest games have begun developing a college scene for universities to compete for scholarship money. League of Legends has the biggest college scene as Riot Games, the game developer, continues to grow it far and beyond any other game.
NC State had to get through a long path of qualifying tournaments to get to this point. It started in the South Regional Tournament, where it needed a top-two placement to advance to the play-in tournament.
The Pack came into the regional as the No. 4 seed and defeated Florida International 3-0 before defeating Virginia Tech 3-0 in the semifinals to advance to the tournament finals.
“Our quarterfinals and semifinals were really clean,” Downhower said. “We beat both teams 3-0. Our semifinals match was against Virginia Tech. We did lose to Virginia Tech in the group stage, so it was kind of a revenge match for us to play against them in semis.”
With a spot in the play-in tournament already booked, the Pack took on UT Austin in the finals. Just as the Pack had done to its previous opponents, however, Texas handled them in 3-0 fashion.
“We came into it pretty confident, and we weren’t expecting them to be as good as they were,” Downhower said. “Even though we could’ve played better and were better than them on our best day, we didn’t on that day.”
The play-in tournament for Los Angeles featured 16 teams that were split into two pools of eight, where they played a round robin-style tournament. Four teams advanced to Los Angeles from this tournament: the two pool winners and the two winners of the two-seed versus three-seed matches.
NC State went 5-2 in pool play to lock in a third-place finish, with its only losses coming to Michigan State and Columbia College, who finished first and second in the pool.
As the third-place finisher in pool B, NC State played the second-place finisher in pool A, San Jose State University, for a chance to go to LA. The Pack handled San Jose State 2-0 to qualify for the big tournament. UT Austin lost its play-in match to Columbia, so the three teams from pool B (Michigan State, NC State and Columbia) advance along with pool A winner Waterloo.
These four teams will join Maryville, UC Irvine, Western University and Illinois as the top eight teams in the country. With the loss of UT Austin, NC State will be the only team in LA that will be representing the south region.
According to Downhower, as a team, the Pack has won $56,000 in scholarship money this season from the two big tournament wins and $63,000 total over the last three seasons. The 2019 College Championship doesn’t hold any prize except for the free trip to California.
Joining Downhower on the team are sophomore top laner Harrison “Wolfskullrider” Ramsey, senior mid laner Tyler “ShadowVisions” Deaton, junior bottom laner Johnny “riftdog” Huang and senior support Kenton “Haanii” Crane, with the help of sophomore Michael Adamik, who works as the team’s support staff.
Seeded as the No. 8 team in the tournament, NC State will face off against No. 1 Maryville in the first round of the single-elimination tournament on Thursday, May 23 at 9 p.m. on twitch.tv/riotgames.
“The champions that we prioritize are very different than other teams, so there is some shock value that goes along with that,” Downhower said. “We play with a surprising amount of aggression at times as well that can catch a lot of teams off guard, even if they are higher ranked than us on paper.”
