The Emory eSports “Overwatch” team closed week three of the Tespa Spring Series with an overall 4-2 map count, falling to 44th place out of 286 North American collegiate teams. The competition began on April 22 with a win by forfeit against “Tempest” from the University at Buffalo (N.Y.) and a loss to the “St. Clair Saints” from St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario.
Emory started off the series with a win over Buffalo after “Tempest” failed to provide six members who could play in the match.
Senior team captain Peter “HEAT” Steinberg said the Eagles had won by forfeit in matches last year, but this was the first instance this semester.
“Five minutes went by, and nothing happened,” Steinberg said, after queuing for the match. “At that point they finally joined. But they only had four players.”
In the second match of the day, the Eagles lost in a map count of 2-1 against St. Clair.
The Eagles emerged victorious a close match against St. Clair in the first map of the series, King’s Row. Both teams finished with a strong defensive round with neither making it far past the overpass beyond the first control point. However, the Eagles secured the win, taking the map 2-1.
The team opened the next map, Nepal, with a win on the first control point, Sanctum. However, the Eagles failed to take the ensuing maps, Shrine and Village. St. Clair took Nepal in a 2-1 victory, tying the score.
Steinberg said that St. Clair’s team composition seemed to be designed to cover the weaknesses of certain characters such as grandmaster Hanzo.
“Hanzo is a very weird character in the sense that he can be powerful in certain hands, but he’s very inconsistent,” Steinberg said. “His value to the team is whether or not he can get headshots and instantly remove people — kind of like Widowmaker.”
Although the Eagles didn’t cite a singular reason for their loss, junior Sreesh “Valor” Sridhar said that a multitude of small mistakes in the third map, Route 66, may have cost them the game.
“[The Route 66 game] was very very close at the end,” Sridhar said. “[St. Clair] pushed [the payload] to the end because we were holding pretty well on the third point. … Their Hanzo ended up getting four kills. And they were great shots, headshot after headshot.”
Route 66 ended with a 2-3 loss for the Eagles, ending week three with a 1-1 map count.
Week four of the tournament, the final week before single elimination rounds, begins on April 29.
