While most sports have hit a lull, the Queen’s eSports Association (QEA) has been competing fervently.
This past weekend, QEA’s Rocket League team played in the first round of playoffs, losing to the University of Ottawa in their final best-of-five match, but ultimately moving on to the next round, albeit as the lowest seed.
The Gaels fought hard against the Gee-Gees but suffered a crushing 6-1 loss in game five, failing to snatch up second place in the ongoing Rocket League tournament.
Rocket League is a competitive video game, that essentially mimics soccer—except three players on each team operate cars that can flip, do aerials, and pick up boosts from around the field while trying to knock a ball into the opposing team’s net.
Pros—like the three students on the Queen’s team—make it look a lot easier than it really is. The Gaels’ team is comprised of Ryan ‘Trenchh’ Protheroe, ArtSci ’21, Denis ‘sprngr’ Springer, Sci ’22, and Hudson ‘Quantum’ Dye, Sci ’22.
The Journal spoke with Dye about the difficult loss and the Gaels’ strategy going forward in the tournament.
“We definitely should’ve won but we really fell apart a few times in this series and [UOttawa] capitalized on every mistake we made, and then, we pretty much completely fell apart in the last game,” Dye said.
This was the first round of playoffs with the Gaels, Concordia eSports, and UOttawa Gee-Gees all in the same group, vying for two open spots to enter the next round. In all, it entailed three best-of-five matches.
The Gaels beat Concordia in the first match and UOttawa beat Concordia in the second, disqualifying them from the tournament.
But match three—the Gales vs. the Gee-Gees—was a nail-biter. The Gaels won 4-3 in overtime in game one, lost 4-3 in overtime in Game two and won 3-2 in overtime in game three. However, the Gee-Gees won 3-1 in game four and 6-1 in game five.
“Momentum is so huge. Some bad bounce happens for us and it’s just some stupid goal for the other team. That’s the worst thing for our momentum. We really fall apart in those situations,” Dye said.
He plans to review their games against UOttawa on the Ontario Post-Secondary eSports (OPSE) Twitch account—where all the games are live-streamed—so he and his team can strategize should they face off against the Gee-Gees again.
According to Dye, the Gaels play well together when facing random teams in online ranked matches, and they even rank higher than any other OPSE team. Yet, facing off against other Ontario students can be unpredictable.
“[The Gee-Gees] do a lot of unpredictable stuff and we play a really reactive play style. So, when things happen that are much different than things that would happen in [online ranked games], for example, we’re taken off-guard […] We should probably just play a more proactive defense style, which is hard.”
Going into the next round of playoffs this Sunday, the Gaels hold onto sixth place but will have to win their first match or face elimination.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.
