League of Legends, a widely popular multiplayer video game, has joined the world of university varsity sports.
Robert Morris University-Illinois (RMU), near Chicago, announced it has added the online competitive sport—or eSport— to its varsity athletics program, making it the first university to do so.
The RMU varsity team will join the Collegiate StarLeague League of Legends, a group of 103 registered universities and colleges across North America, which compete against each other every year.
While these teams are recognized as clubs at their respective universities, RMU will be the first to label theirs as a varsity athletic team.
Kurt Melcher, associate athletic director at RMU, said he discovered the competitiveness of League of Legends while looking through old video games at his house one day.
“I came across some of the new games and was astounded by the size and scale of the League community,” Melcher said.
“Knowing the culture here at our school and how we give scholarships to bowling teams and performing arts, the athletic director and I brought the idea forward and thought it made a lot of sense,” he said.
RMU officially added the eSport to its varsity athletics program on June 11.
Scholarships will be offered to top players, covering as much as 50 per cent of tuition, room, and board, Melcher said.
RMU is aiming to have four to five League of Legends teams, each of which consists of five players, for their launch in September, Melcher said.
League of Legends athletes at RMU will train by playing against each other and viewing other Collegiate StarLeague games to analyze their strategies and weaknesses, Melcher said.
Although most of the feedback has been positive, Melcher said he still receives some funny looks from members of other sports teams who say online gaming shouldn’t be considered a sport.
Holden Harris, a third-year psychology student at the University of Waterloo and the founder of his school’s League of Legends club, isn’t so sure that the popular video game should be considered a varsity sport.
“I disagree with labelling it as athletics,” he said.
“It’s not athletic, but it’s still very skill-based and it’s great it’s being taking more seriously,” Harris said.
Harris emphasized the skills and knowledge required in competitive video games, an aspect he said people tend to downplay.
“There’s quick decision-making and mechanical skills involved,” he said, adding that these skills are also required in sports like soccer and basketball.
Andrew Smith, a second-year interactive multimedia and design student at Carleton, is involved in the school’s eSports Club, which hosts viewing parties and provides a space to play video games, including League of Legends.
Although common stereotypes say otherwise, Smith said the game is as much of a social activity as any sport.
“It’s something you can do with friends . . . It’s about getting together with people with similar interests,” he said.
Smith said he thinks it’s great that RMU is recognizing League of Legends as a sport and that he hopes to see Carleton form its own official eSports team at some point in the future.
“I know plenty of people who would support it here,” he said. “It may take a while, but after one school does it, I think others will catch on.”
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