At Vermont Tech, video games get varsity treatment
Photo courtesy of the US Department of Defense
RANDOLPH — Students take over the basement in Keenan Hall after sunset nearly every night at Vermont Technical College, posting up in front of computer monitors with rainbow-colored keyboards and headsets.
Sophomore Luc Levesque, a regular, spent a recent weeknight explaining one game he and others come there to grind — first-person shooter Valorant — all while killing opponents, defusing bombs and chatting with friends through his headset. Instead of high fives or body bumps with teammates, he celebrated the victory with quick clicks of his mouse and a shout into his mic.
Levesque and the rest are members of the college’s esports club, and those moments are routine for the group of almost 100 students — nearly half of whom compete as varsity athletes for the Knights in a nontraditional but growing scene. Esports — organized, professional video game competitions — have blown up in the past 10 years, with millions of people tuning in to watch championship streams online, according to the Washington Post.
This semester Vermont Tech competed in NACE Starleague, which bills itself as is the largest intercollegiate esports league in North America with more than 700 active schools and 4,000 teams. The college fielded teams in Valorant, Rocket League and Fortnite tournaments, and last Saturday it secured 25th out of 300 schools in the national varsity championship for the latter game.
With the recent turmoil around the college’s merger into Vermont State University — including a plan to scrap varsity sports in Randolph — club members weren’t sure whether those winning trends would keep strong. But with administrators reversing course this week, for now the esports teams are here to stay.
The administration’s commitment to retaining varsity teams for at least the next three years is exciting news to club president and first-year Lauryn Strahan. That, she said, should help the club bring more teams online. Group leaders want to build teams for games like League of Legends, Call of Duty and Overwatch — though they say they still have to work to do with recruitment.
But the club isn’t just about competitive play, Strahan said.
She fell in love with video games by playing Minecraft as a kid. And when she wasn’t playing, she was studying others playing the game on YouTube. Going back and forth between different YouTube creators she saw they were all connected and friends, which sparked her desire to create a gaming community like that in the future.
Strahan got the keys to the esports basement room last semester and likes to keep the door open. “I like the fact that it brings people in, and I think bringing people down here will encourage people to play,” she said.
That recent night with Levesque playing Valorant, students from the Adventurers Guild club sat at a conference table planning their next Dungeons and Dragons meeting while playing a board game. Sometimes the poker players show up, other times it’s the Nerf club, making the basement a gathering place for all sorts of gaming communities. More than 90 people belong to a server on Discord — a voice, video and text chat app — dedicated to the basement enclave.
Levesque has been playing games on Xbox since he was a kid and took the leap into competitive gameplay on PC within the last three years. He taught first-year Lily Kalakay how to play Valorant last year and now the two spend nearly every day in the esports room practicing. They’re also both players for the college’s basketball teams.
“Personally, I work for a goal, which is to get kills,” Kalakay explained. She works to reach higher levels and unlock new players, too, and on that night could be heard loud and clear while doing it. Because she is relatively new to Valorant, Kalakay said she needs to learn the maps to help her navigation in competitive play. Strategy and studying the game are essential to practice, according to her and Levesque.
If there aren’t scheduled practice times, gaming for practice and playing for fun can blur, but they usually go hand in hand either way. That could be a downside when combined with the basement’s lack of windows — it’s easy to lose track of time — but Strahan said taking care of people’s mental health is important to the club. During weekdays, she aims to close the door around midnight and gives players loose time limits for certain games.
“I feel like I’m being too motherly,” Strahan said jokingly. “But I just care about everyone.”
The esports room is equipped with a PlayStation 5, VR headset, five PCs lined up with two monitors each and even a projector screen with Snorlax-shaped Pokémon bean bags around it for movie nights. A half-finished Knights Esports mural sits in progress on the wall, along with anime posters and green LED lights lining the perimeter of the space.
Descending the stairs into the world of esports at Vermont Tech comes with a few other perks too: seemingly unlimited Mountain Dew, snacks, brand new games to try out and a community of friendly faces that welcomes people around campus.
“This isn’t really my club — it’s the community’s club,” Strahan said.
