University Of Montana Celebrates Historic Esports Championship Win
Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - UM has another national championship to celebrate, and instead of being on the gridiron, this hard-fought championship was online, as Grizzly Esports won its first video game national championship on May 6.
I spoke with Cale Patenaude, UM Esports Assistant Director on Wednesday about UM’s first video game national championship.
UM's Grizzly Esports Win First National Championship
“Back in 2019, my boss came up with this brilliant idea of trying to bring Esports from kind of a club to a full program here at the University of Montana,” began Patenaude. “He called me up and said, ‘Hey, is this something you're interested in’? I said, ‘Absolutely! ’ You know, gaming is a big passion of mine, and how are we going to do this? We're going to focus on community, getting students involved, and getting them to succeed through college.”
Patenaude explained that the game was used by all the competitors.
All Teams Competed Playing the League of Legends Video Game
“We played the game called League of Legends,” he said. “It has about 120 million users who play worldwide. It's probably one of the most widely known esports games. They have a world championship on the pro side, similar to like NFL or NBA, and we were able to play in one of the conferences. We played in the West Conference. We were able to work our way through that, and won the conference, and then we were invited to play nationals, which we then played through our national division and won that, as well.”
Patenaude said all the teams competed online.
“This is all done virtually,” he said. “There are a few instances where travel is a thing, but nine times out of 10, I mean, we all know Montana, geographically is pretty large, so it's harder for a lot of the West schools to get together in a physical location, versus like on the east coast, where going to the next 20 colleges in 20 minutes.”
Patenaude said all five team members have their online ‘handles’.
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Check out the UM Winning Team's Video Game Usernames
“In League of Legends, there are five lanes,” he said. “For our top lane, we have Jace, and his username is known as Cronk. So Jace Krauuuunk Thomas. And then in our jungle, we have Dean Replay DK Klakken III. Then in our mid lane we have Andrew, MrPredator Dinh. And then in the bot lane, you have a duo lane, so there are two players, and that's Dylan OGRE RI GAP Nguyen, and Logan, UMT Dapuppy Richardson.”
Patenaude said even though the competition was online, the trophy is very real, and will be on display in the Griz Esports Arena, where there are 30 PC’s dedicated to all of the Esports activities and games.