Asher Gibbons
Sports Editor
The conference season finale for three esports teams took place on November 8, but not without tremendous controversy and a tumble off the stage.
On November 8, the Florida Southern esports teams of Rocket League, Overwatch and Marvel Rivals traveled to South Carolina to compete in the Peach Belt Conference Fall Championship.
This was the inaugural year for Marvel Rivals in the Peach Belt, where the Mocs placed third, falling two sets to three against Montevallo. Similarly, the Rocket League team also fell two sets to three against Embry Riddle.
Conversely, the Overwatch team was swept in three sets for a sixth place finish out of the eight teams.
For Rocket League, the team went into the tournament as the second seed. The double elimination bracket brought them to the finals of the winners bracket where they fell to the number one seed Kennesaw State, then dropped their match in the losers bracket to the aforementioned three seed in Embry Riddle.
Going into South Carolina, the Rocket League team expected to go to the grand finals because of their seeding according to sophomore Jeremiah Gartner.
As for the Marvel Rivals team, senior Jacob Powell was pleased with their performance.
“Three years running, haven’t won a single game at LAN. And just to get that feeling was awesome. It made me want the next one so badly, and we were so close to getting it,” Powell said.
His first win came against Centre, where they won three sets to one. In their following game against Montevallo, they fell in the fifth and final set. The two sets the team won were on “domination” gamemodes, where teams fought to capture and control specific areas of the map.
However, in Convergence and Convoy gamemodes, the team heavily struggled. They couldn’t find any traction, and most of their hero picks just didn’t end up really working in their favor according to Powell.
Powell was quick to voice his frustration about the tournament, as his teammate, Caeleb Molnar fell off the stage at one point and computers malfunctioned on multiple occasions.
When reciting the incidents, Powell said that Molnar was walking off the stage when he distractedly slipped and dropped about four or five feet onto the ice rink the tournament was held on. The next day, the team would find a conveniently placed railing where he fell off.
Additionally, Powell stated that the venue had at least 30 different technical difficulties including the computers on stage losing power twice in two days, shutting off mid-tournament.
