{"id":55964,"date":"2020-08-17T08:05:49","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T13:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=55964"},"modified":"2020-08-17T08:05:51","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T13:05:51","slug":"%ef%bb%bfesports-new-varsity-sport-for-the-black-and-gold-of-fhsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=55964","title":{"rendered":"\ufeffEsports: New varsity sport for the Black and Gold of FHSU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fort Hays State University has added a new varsity sport this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While\ncompetition in the university\u2019s fall NCAA-sanctioned sports was suspended\nbecause of COVID-19, FHSU Varsity Esports, a sports competition using video\ngames, will begin entering tournaments in September. Sixteen varsity players in\nfour game titles will represent Fort Hays State in the varsity team\u2019s inaugural\nyear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fort Hays State\nhas fielded competitive teams in its Esports Club for several years. The\nuniversity\u2019s first varsity team is an initiative funded through the university\u2019s Strategic Enrollment Planning\n(SEP) process and was\napproved this past spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scholarships\nare available for varsity players, and Esports Director Kevin Shaffer has\nstarted the recruiting process for expanding the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nEsports Club will have members manning a table at next week\u2019s Back to School Party\non the Quad Monday and Tuesday, and Shaffer expects it to be a popular booth.\nEsports, the largest gaming market in the world, is expected to gross more than\n$1 billion this year. The most popular game, League of Legends, features 100\nmillion active players logging in per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shaffer,\nassociate professor of informatics, said this fall the club plans to join the\nNational Association of Collegiate Esports, which oversees the management of\ncollege esports teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Any\nFHSU student can join the Esports Club. The varsity team will be comprised of\ngamers who are enrolled as full-time, on-campus students (12 hours for\nundergraduates and nine hours for graduate students).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nEsports Club gaming lab is located in Hammond Hall 110. While the club met once\na week last year, most of the meetings currently are being conducted through\nZoom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A\nportion of the varsity program\u2019s funding provides for 14 new gaming computers,\nwhich will be built by FHSU\u2019s own Tiger Tech, the university\u2019s technical\nassistance resource. That will bring to 20 the number of computers in the lab\nafter the Esports Club members last year built six new ones with funds from the\nStudent Government Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For\nmore information about the Esports Club and its new varsity team, contact\nShaffer at (785) 628-4484 or <a href=\"mailto:kshaffer@fhsu.edu\">kshaffer@fhsu.edu<\/a>\nor visit <a href=\"https:\/\/tigerlink.fhsu.edu\/organization\/esportsclub\">https:\/\/tigerlink.fhsu.edu\/organization\/esportsclub<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS Fort Hays State University has added a new varsity sport this fall. While competition in the university\u2019s fall NCAA-sanctioned sports was suspended&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/preview-lightbox-Esports_Logo_Varsity.png?fit=1700%2C1888&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55965,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55964\/revisions\/55965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}