For anyone craving live sports action, the DACC Gamers team at Danville Area Community College has you covered. While other sports have been shuttered or relegated to re-runs, eSports have continued to meet in weekly, online competition.
Under advisor Michael “Guido” Esteves guidance, weekly Smash Brothers tournaments are continuing at DACC on Saturday afternoons. The competition on Saturday, May 9, will feature 175 players. Tournament play begins at 2pm and it is currently free to participants.
In a report to DACC President Stephen Nacco, Esteves said, “I started to promote the tournament on the discord channels I’ve been using for recruitment and we jumped from 12 entries the week before to 175 entries this week. It was a crazy day but we made it through. Kudos to the team captains for their calmness under pressure as it was chaotic keeping up with everyone’s needs, but we got through it.”
Discord channels are chat pages the competitors use during the tournament. The link to the discord channel DACC tournaments use is https://discord.gg/JVKa2t. The link for the upcoming Smash Tournament is Smash.gg/dacc_week5. Anyone wishing to watch the tournament can catch the action live at https://www.twitch.tv/dacc_esports.
While the DACC Gaming Club existed for a couple of years, eSports really hit its stride at DACC during the Fall 2019 semester when a dedicated space was allocated and new furniture and equipment put in place for team members. Gaming as a college sport is in its infancy, but DACC plans to be ready to hit the ground running. Already, limited scholarships are offered to players selected as Team Captains.
For more information about the tournament, contact Coach Esteves at gesteves@dacc.edu.
(This story from the Marketing Department at Danville Area Community College.)
