UB Wins ESC Valorant Championship in Overtime Nail-Biter

Bulls esports defeated Akron Zips 3-2 to win the grand championship

Six Buffalo esports players defeated Akron to win the 2022 ESC Fall Valorant Championship

The UB esports varsity Valorant team defeated the Akron Zips on Sunday afternoon to win the ESC conference grand finals.

The championship matchup was a best of five maps, with Akron taking the first one. UB proceeded to win the next two, before Akron won map four, bringing the match to game five. Game five ended in five rounds of over-time.

The ESC conference consists of 14 collegiate teams across the U.S. and shares many of the same schools as the MAC conference. The playoffs saw UB defeat the Miami University Redhawks in quarterfinals, and the Northern Illinois University Huskies in the semifinals.

The victory was made even sweeter after being defeated in the semifinals in the 2021 season, and due to the nature of the five rounds of overtime.

“It was a great feeling knowing that all the hard work and endless hours of working together finally paid off. The last moments before the end of the game was unbearable as we were all nervous. I knew we had it in the bag as we finally had the opportunity to reveal our final trap play to win the game,” said Eric “face” Chen, a senior management information systems major, and captain of the varsity Valorant team.

Despite losing the first map to Akron, the team did not feel pressure, as they still played well and had Freshman computer science major Justin “justin” Nguyen sub in for the last four maps.

“Losing the first map had no impact on us. We had a sub play and we had four role swaps and yet we still got nine rounds on them. It could have easily went our favor if we had more practice with the comp we ran, but having nine was kinda embarrassing for them. We were confident once Justin came, we had it,” said Chen.

The team described themselves as having good energy on and off the game.

“We are pretty close! We joke around and enjoy all the moments we spent together especially during practices. We became friends first before teammates which helped our chemistry and build trust,” said Chen.

The path to victory for the team wasn’t always easy.

“We had a lot of disagreements and arguments, but at the end of the day, we had the same goal of winning it all. We might not have had the most scrims or practices, but we learnt a lot from our losses. As the season went on, our chemistry and communication just got so much better, it felt like it was impossible to lose.” Said Chen.

Nguyen agreed the team had improved since the start of the season, and was proud of the outcome.

“I can see a lot of improvement that we have had since the beginning. I am a freshman and I kept an eye on the buffalo team since 11th grade knowing that I wanted to play for the university. I am glad I got to finally be here and meet everyone.” He said.

Player Nicholas “bap” Lane, a Sophomore electrical engineering major is already looking forward to next year “I think we definitely deserved to win and you’ll see us playing better and in bigger tournaments next year!” He said.

The team also consisted of Senior management information systems major Justin “SaltyEggRoll” Le, Senior psychology major Andrew “Novixx” McCarthy, and Sophomore business administration major Ethan “win4life” Yew.

The team was coached by Corey “Ruin” Hartog, who Chen said pushed the team to the next level and allowed them to be more confident after joining midway through their season.

The game was streamed on the ESC conference Twitch.tv channel, and the match ran for a total of four and a half hours, with approximately 15 minutes of break between the five maps.

Buffalo was seeded at number two, and Akron was seeded at number one.

Originally written for the UB Spectrum, December 5, 2022