ABOVE: DACC Esports coach Guido Esteves and Mario Kart Esports national champion Michael Davis “D.C.” Canady discuss the young program, now in its third year of competition, with the DACC Board.
The Danville Area Community College Board of Trustees had a couple visitors Thursday (Dec 21st) evening. The DACC Esports program is in its third year of competition. And now they have a national champion. Coach Guido Esteves, also a music professor at DACC, told Neuhoff Media afterwards that the program provides great opportunities.
AUDIO: Every sport’s a little different. Some are teams of three; some are teams of five. I recruit everywhere possible. I mean, you name it; I’ll go to a Rotary meeting, I talk about it at shows, I go to schools, we hold tournaments. Kids can get a scholarship with video games here. Also, they get jobs. So our kids work in the lab, and compete. The beauty is that a small place like Danville can have a national champion.
And that national champion is freshman student and Salt Fork High School graduate Michael Davis Canady, known to everyone as “D.C.” He’s at DACC working on his Culinary Arts Certificate; but right now he’s also taken the Esports he did in a club at Salt Fork, and gone right to the top; competing against others around the country right from the gaming lab on the DACC campus.
AUDIO: I joined the Mario Kart team at the beginning of this semester. And I won the Generation Esports Open Series, which is one of three series that they hold through the program.
And a great side note is that Canady’s great-grandmother Peggy Gardner once worked as executive secretary for former and first DACC president Mary Miller.
