Keyser, WV
The WVU Potomac State College esports Valorant Blue team competed in the ECAC Esports Fall 23 Contenders League this semester. Starting back in September, the team made up of Logan Riggleman, Andrew Swink, Shawn Baker, Keith Benolken, and Alex Orndorff competed weekly against other collegiate esports teams from around the nation.
On September 26th the Catamounts kicked things off with a 2-0 win against Post University, and then continued their win streak against the University of Delaware on October 3rd and St. John Fisher University on October 11th. The team added two more wins in the second half of October, first against Muskingum University of October 17th, 2-0, and then another 2-0 win against University of Louisiana at Lafayette on October 24th. The first loss of the year came on October 31st in a 0-2 game vs Southeast Missouri State University. They followed that up with a close 1-2 loss against Catawba College and wrapped up their final regular season match with a win against ECPI on November 14th 2-1. They finished the regular season 6-2 overall and got ranked for playoffs.
The playoff portion of the league, the round of 16, started on November 28th with two matches that night. They first faced off against Saint Joseph's University at 8pm which resulted in a 2-0 Potomac State victory and moved on to the quarter finals that same night. At 9:30pm they faced off against St. John Fisher University and came away with another 2-0 victory.
In the Semi finals, the Catamounts faced Illinois Wesleyan and came away with the 3-0 victory on December 5th, setting them up for the final against ECPI University on December 12th. This was the same team they had faced a month prior, so the competition was fresh in the minds of the team.
The Catamounts started the championship match losing the first map on Split 8-13, the map MVP for map 1 is Andrew Swink with an ACS of 298. The following map was played on Breeze with a 13-8 map win for the Catamounts following a stellar performance from Alex Orndorff with a 314 ACS, tying the series 1-1. After this map, the Catamounts finally found their footing in the series. (Not sure of the wording here) Following up their first map win the Catamounts continued to map 3 on Lotus with a 13-2 map win making the series 2-1 with the game MVP of Alex Orndorff with an ACS of 299. Map 4 was another 13-2 Catamount win on Sunset with the map MVP being Alex Orndorff with an ACS of 346.
The Catamounts win the series 3-1 and are your ECAC Fall 23 Contenders Champions.
If you missed the action you can watch the competition on the WVUPSC Twitch page at https://www.twitch.tv/wvupsc.