The Wayland Baptist eSports team recently concluded its third season.
"Everything is wrapped up," said
Duncan Sweeney, who has served as coach of the program since its inception in 2019.
The Pioneers competed in six games over the past eight months: Rocket League, Valorant, Super Smash Bros., Hearthstone, Overwatch and Fornite. Four of those games came to a close during the spring semester.
Overwatch wound up with a 3-6 record while Smash Bros. went 5-4 and took fourth place out of 10 teams in NACE conference. "The top three qualified, so we almost made nationals," Sweeney said.
In Fortnite, Wayland placed 15
th out of 28 teams in its NACE conference, while WBU's best Hearthstone performance in three tournaments was 3-3.
Sweeney said the highlight of the season was the performance of the Smash team.
"I was really happy with how we did in our circuit because we had some really killer teams and we took some games off of them," the coach said. "I saw our team's growth come to full fruition this semester, and that felt really good."
Sweeney said Overwatch, which will compete both semesters next school year, "had some struggles" due to "leadership changing hands and new composition of players, but they did pretty well considering that."
The coach added that overall he came away happy with his teams' showings.
"I was pretty pleased with this semester. We had good growth. I'm just ready to see the program grow in numbers."
And that's where Sweeney has turned his attention.
"I'm switching gears to recruiting now that the season is over," he said.
He plans to visit area high schools and hold an eSports summer camp for the first time in June.
The WBU eSports program started the fall semester with 29 student-athletes and ends the spring semester with 22.
"My goal is to have 35 athletes across all the eSports teams starting fall 2022," Sweeney said.
The coach isn't sure which games will be offered the next two semesters.
"It's hard to say. NACE hasn't given any hints as to what we will be playing next semester."
That makes recruiting difficult, according to Sweeney.
"It's very challenging," he said. "Somebody may say, 'I love "Call of Duty,''' but we won't know until May or June if we will have it."
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