23-04-2025
CVTC hosts area colleges at regional esports tournament
EAU CLAIRE — Over the weekend, many students from five area colleges met at Chippewa Valley Technical College in Eau Claire to compete in a sport that is becoming increasingly popular.
Rather than football or soccer, a number of college esports teams faced off in two different video games for their playoff matches.
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'We just finished up our regular season,' said Zach Janot, esports student coach at UW-Stout. 'We played eight games of that, and went six and two, so now we are here to qualify for the state regional in May.'
'This is a regional LAN, which is an in-person tournament, from the Wisconsin Esports Conference,' said Erin Hazen, CVTC coordinator of clubs and leadership. 'That conference is a conference of many local Wisconsin-based colleges. We have been competing since early February, and this is the regional LAN — this is an equivalent of playoffs in traditional athletics.'
LAN, which is short for local area network, is a term that is used when devices are connected to each other in one physical location. While the esports teams compete online, the two-day regional LAN was one example of when players meet face to face. The two games which students played were Super Smash Bros, a series published by Nintendo on the Nintendo Switch, and Overwatch 2, a game playable on the computer published by Blizzard Entertainment.
'This is considered the northwest region of the Wisconsin Esports Conference,' said Hazen. 'We have UW-Stout here (in Eau Claire), UW-River Falls, UW-Superior, UW-Eau Claire and then CVTC.'
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Especially as the popularity of esports continues to grow in universities, many of the members also see colleges accepting esports teams onto campus as a part of the positive trend.
'People are starting to see it as an actual collegiate sport on the level of football, baseball and basketball,' said Janot. 'It is a big deal, and it is going to continue to become a bigger deal.
'Esports is all about teamwork. We are a team no more than any other collegiate sport; we have to coordinate together, we have to play each other every day. Even though I am the coach, we all coach each other because some of us can only see something about the game based on the characters we play.'
In the first round of the round robin matches on Saturday, Austin Aguiler, CVTC club president, faced off against one of the players from Stout in a Super Smash Bros Match.
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After the first round, Aguiler shared his thought process while playing and said, 'I am trying to stay calm. I was in sports all throughout high school, so I have the mentality for competitiveness and understand staying cool and thinking during that time while trying not to make any mistakes.
'I think that videogaming in general has become such a part of kids' and students' lives, and so when you are looking at meeting students where they are at, esports is really one of those really excellent things,' said Hazen. 'People are still playing traditional athletics and doing a lot more things, but most people have a computer in their house or a Switch in their house. It is something that is a little more approachable for people of different abilities or social economic statuses, and that is something that the colleges really like too because you don't need to invest into these huge stadiums. If you have room for 24 computers or a place for a Switch or two, you are able to put it together and host things like this.'
While teams played on Saturday and Sunday, other teams at regional LAN tournaments in the Wisconsin Esports Conference, or WEC, were also competing simultaneously.
For CVTC, Hazen said being able to support esport LAN matches on their campus is a great opportunity.
'It is sometimes hard to stay at the level of the UWs, especially for a technical college,' she said. 'Being able to bring them here and have them in our space is a really awesome opportunity. Even just competing against them in general is not something you would typically see in traditional athletics, but in esports people with so many different skills can get together and play against each other. It is really cool to not only be able to play against them, but also to be able to bring them to our space and host.'
