CWU intramural sports hosted the first esports event of the quarter on Friday, Jan. 14.  Twelve students showed up to compete in the SURC theater by scoring goals in the popular car soccer game, Rocket League. 

Time and technical difficulties with internet connectivity forced the final six matches of the tournament to be postponed. They will be rescheduled online for sometime this week. IllusionMonkey is in the winner’s bracket while Johnny, Evan Lafrance, TwoFiveThree, Legs and Aviators in the loser’s bracket.

Intramural lead Johnny Felty participated and provided commentary during Friday’s event. Felty also participated in the Rocket League duos online tournament last quarter.

“Personally, it’s my favorite game, so I like to build up that community as much as I can,” Felty said.

The event was set up as a double elimination tournament with the winner taking home a CWU Champions T-shirt.

Student Colby Davis, a Diamond II ranked player, which Davis described as being the middle of the rankings, has been playing Rocket League for about six years and has been playing more often recently.

“Once I came to Central, I found it really interesting that they were doing stuff like this,” Davis said. 

A poll posted to the CWU Recreation Discord showed a majority interest in Super Smash Bros. Felty said there’s already a big scene of Smash players here at CWU. Students were also interested in Call of Duty, Apex Legends and Fifa.

“I think Smash Bros. actually does top us in participation just ‘cause so many people play it,” Felty said. 

Felty hopes that the CWU Recreation Discord will hit or exceed their goal of 500 members by the end of the school year.

“We’re up to just under 400 people in the Discord, which is awesome,”Felty said. “I was hoping to get 500 by the end of the year, but I think we’re gonna get more than that.”

The link to CWU Recreation Discord can be found here http://discord.gg/QqCeDhH. 

Future eSports events will be taking place at 7 p.m. every other Friday. The next tournament will feature Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Jan. 28. Students can watch future events at home from the CWU Student Engagement Twitch channel.