BY DYLAN SWIHART
The Fort Hays State LoL (League of Legends) varsity team started their 2022 season on Saturday, Jan. 22. The team will play for six weeks on Saturdays.
This is the first official year that the FHSU League of Legends team is competing in the CLOL (Collegiate League of Legends).
The CLOL consists of four conferences, North, East, South, and West. FHSU competes in the North conference.
Kevin Shaffer, director of Esports for FHSU, explained that the tournament is in a “Swiss” format.
“We’ll start off playing very high-level teams, the way it’s organized, we’ll be significant underdogs in maybe the first week or two,” Shaffer said. “After that we’ll kind of settle into a range where we’ll play teams at our own level.”
The teams are reseeded after each week. FHSU is ranked No. 57 in the conference.
FHSU’s LoL team roster consists of Bryan Delarose, Oscar Millan, Dylan Brown, Noah Oborny, and Austin Gray.
Delarosa plays top lane, Gray is ADC, Millan is support, Brown plays mid lane, and Oborny is jungle. Top lane position is a lone role for tanks or high damage characters. ADC stands for Attack Damage Carry, used for attacking towers and dealing high amounts of damage in late game.
Support is the player who knows how to use their utility, they help the ADC player. Mid-lane is considered the most difficult role to play in LoL, it is the core of the team. The Jungle role does not occupy any lanes or team’s bases, killing neutral monsters in the jungle to keep up with their laning teammates in terms of gold and experience.
As the season progresses these positions are due to change as the squad looks for the best fit for each player and the team.
The team started off the season matching up against the No. 14 ranked University of Kansas. FHSU was swept 2-0.
They then played No. 50 ranked Dakota State University on Saturday, again being swept 2-0.
To put it into perspective, League of Legends does have a ranked system in the game. The ranks consist of Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger.
Each rank consists of four separate divisions in the rank, for example, Iron IV, Iron III, Iron II, and Iron I. After Iron I the player then goes up to the next rank of Bronze IV and so on.
FHSU’s team consists of mostly Platinum ranked players and the top teams, like the University of Kansas, consists of Master ranked players.
“Next week, the third week of the season, is looking very promising for the team as we will be matched up against a relatively similar caliber of team,” Shaffer said.
Schaffer explains the background of FHSU Esports, which is still relatively new on campus.
“Esports was a club that got started and then split off from the Advanced Technology Student Organization… They’ve been holding on-campus in-person tournaments for about four or five years now,” Shaffer said. “This invited an initiative to be put up and Esports has now had varsity teams for the last two years.”
He also talked about the upcoming LoL season saying unlike a traditional football, soccer, or volleyball schedule, where you know next year we’re playing on these dates, against these [teams]… we won’t know who we are playing right away.
You can watch the team play live on Saturdays at 3 pm on stream at https://www.twitch.tv/oniblossomg.