With varsity sports coming to a halt this fall, Carleton Athletics is launching Ontario Post-Secondary eSports (OPSE), the first university-level eSports organization in the province.
Students will compete against other Ontario post-secondary institutions for various prizes, including scholarships from a $24,000 prize pool.
For students missing varsity sports, eSports is an excellent alternative to watching and participating in traditional sports, according to the organizers.
Derek Wilson is a third-year earth sciences student at Carleton and the vice-president of Tespa, Carleton’s eSports club. Tespa has been around since 2016, and has hosted intramural eSports competitions amongst Carleton students in previous years.
“I would describe eSports as the same as any other competitive game, sport or anything like that,” Wilson said. “It’s just playing something at a competitive level and this just happened to be video games.”
Students can sign up for OPSE through Tespa, or Carleton’s eSports page.
The new province-wide eSports league, which started in cooperation with Tespa, has been in the works since before COVID-19, but lends itself well to a virtual school year. Tespa has been successful at Carleton, hosting events with up to 400 people.
“Basically there won’t be really any traditional university sports in the coming year, so [Carleton Athletics has] been able to put their focus on something like this,” Wilson added.
OPSE competitors have four games to choose from: Hearthstone, League of Legends, Overwatch and Rocket League. Each post-secondary institution in Ontario can set up teams of three to six players for each game.
Although competitors may be able to play more than one game, most people specialize in one game for tournaments, according to Wilson.
James Fitzgerald is the league commissioner for OPSE and Tespa’s founder. He said that students at Carleton have been participating in international eSports tournaments for years.
“[Students have] been trying to find an ‘in’ to [university] administration,” Fitzgerald said.
Since this is the first eSports league of its kind in Ontario, Wilson said Tespa and Carleton Athletics had to work creatively to create a structure for the upcoming season, which will take place from October 2020 to March 2021.
“We have drafted up rule sets and schedules for the league, and we did base some of that off of existing eSports leagues,” Wilson said.
OPSE is expected to operate on a similar calendar as traditional sports.
“In the eSports league, [the rules] will be very similar to the behavioural code of conduct that the varsity athletes have to commit to,” Mitchell Dick said, the manager of communication and digital marketing for Carleton Athletics.
Other universities have shown interest in the league. However, since the pre-season does not begin until late August, it is difficult to determine exactly how many other schools will participate.
Students seem to be interested in OPSE as well.
“It’s been really great,” Wilson said. “We’ve had a lot of participation.”
According to Wilson, eSports will see few changes—even in light of the challenges COVID-19 poses for life on and off campus.
“For collegiate eSports, practices are pretty much always online, and they have always been in the past,” he said.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented some logistical hurdles for Ravens organizers.
“The distance is always tough—having to be mediated by our computers rather than being able to sit in a room and hammer things out,” Dick added.
Although there is still much work to be done, Wilson said he is looking forward to OPSE and the upcoming tournaments.
“It would be really great to have some growth in the Canadian collegiate eSports scene which hasn’t really seen much support up until now,” he said.
Featured image provided by Tespa.
