One of our guest writers this week is William Wolf, Student Coordinator for the Esports team. Here he recaps everything from this season and sheds light on what is to come next year. I hope you enjoy! – Mark Musgrave III, Sports Editor

Story by Reporter William Wolf

Much like every year since the inception of the Aquinas Esports Program, no year is the same as any in the past. For context on this, the Esports Program is looking to hire its third director since the program started back in 2019, as well as only having one game-specific coach with four titles to compete in.

For Aquinas Esports, we compete in four games/titles. With that, our WHAC matches are divided up into Fall and Spring. In the Fall, Rocket League (RL) competes, and in the Spring, League of Legends (LoL) and Overwatch 2 (OW2) compete. Unfortunately Super Smash Bros Ultimate (SSBU) is not a title WHAC competes in currently. During the regular season of RL, our team went into the playoffs with a 6-7 record. The RL team was the first of us to compete on stage without a coach and director. A long and snow-covered day led our Saints to finish 5-6th.

During our break in between the competitive seasons, we have been running forward strong with our Super Smash Bro events. An AQ Alum by the name of Will Haran has taken over running events from our previous Smash Coach, bringing back our consistent schedule of Grand Revival, and bringing in his own event called Rodeo! Both of these are events anyone can sign up for to compete in with a low fee, where you will get to compete against our SSBU team, as well as new challengers from the Great Lakes Region and more!

Lastly, we come to this Spring, where we have LoL and OW2 to finish out the last of our competitive season. Our LoL team only dropped one game to Clearly with an overall record of 6-1, and our OW2 team finished out with a record of 2-5. Tensions were high in the Esports Lab, with expectations of a level of performance especially for the LoL team as this same roster had taken first place last year. Unfortunately, we finished 2nd place in LoL, and 7th-8th in OW2. The students are what makes the program special, and I will miss those leaving us to pursue careers and further their education. Next year is a time of rebuilding and refocusing for us, so don’t miss out and stay up to date by following us on Twitter, Twitch, and Instagram @aquinasesports!