The Wayland Baptist eSports team had a busy Saturday with not only a SMITE match in the morning, but two Overwatch matches in the afternoon.
SMITE kicked things off at 10 a.m. against Averett University, Va., the No. 2-ranked NACE school in SMITE.
According to coach Duncan Sweeney, the Pioneers ran their standard team composition, joined by a new player, Trey Watkins "MoondelaMoon," on support role. Team captain Bailey Hair "Solace019" was pleased with the team's synergy and felt the team worked well as a unit.
"In the end, Averett took the game, but we definitely made them earn it," Sweeney said.
At 3 p.m., Overwatch took the spotlight to compete in the TESPA Second Chance Bracket. WBU's first game was against Washington State University, a very high-ranked D1 school. The games were played on Lijiang Tower and Hollywood, and Sweeney said Wayland used its standard composition.
"The match was long and hard fought, with particularly great plays by Zach Neeley "Luck" on tank. WSU ended up winning.
"They are a great team and we learned a lot just by playing against them," Sweeney said.
Then at 5 p.m., Wayland went against Cornell College. In this match the WBU team took a different approach.
"As per Brodie McAfee (Canonn's) strategy, the Pioneers ran what's called a 'dive comp' for our team. In other words, we tried to be as aggressive as possible, and win through overwhelming pressure," Sweeney said. "It started off strong, but Cornell was able to adapt to our strategy and managed to take the game from us."
This week, WBU eSports has an Overwatch scrimmage at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11 against St. Andrew's University, and then at 10 a.m. Saturday is the third round of the NACE SMITE Fall 2019 Championship.
