Mizzou Esports Introduces Competitive Club Teams
By Rilee Stapleton
In 2019, Mizzou Esports jumped into its first season of competitive gaming ready to compete at a top-tier level. The Rocket League team won the National Association of Collegiate Esports’ (NACE) National championship in Atlanta, Georgia, Overwatch was one of 12 teams to be invited to compete in the Tespa Varsity Invitational, and League of Legends competed in the RSAA-sanctioned Midwest Esports Conference, traveling to universities in Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri for our regular season matches.
“In our inaugural year, we weren’t sure what to expect,” Mizzou Esports General Manager Kevin Reape said. “But we knew we wanted to compete at the highest level in our three titles.”
While early success could motivate a program to focus on just those games, the University of Missouri’s esports program took a different approach.
Shortly after launching a discord server open to anyone in the Mizzou family, Mizzou Esports has announced their new club teams in three different games: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Super Smash Bros., and Valorant, along with two new club teams in Rocket League.
“Throughout the last year, we had hundreds of students reach out and ask if we could support some of their initiatives in games that we did not have official rosters for,” Reape said. “We thought that we had a unique ability to support some of these students and provide them high level competition now that we’re in our second year as a program.”
Mizzou Esports will continue to expand their club presence in other titles in future semesters to give students the opportunity to represent the Tigers.
“It’s just a really new thing to be able to represent your school in an esport,” Valorant captain Jacob Higgins said. “It puts a passion into your play that you wouldn’t normally have.”
Listed below are the rosters of the new club teams:
Rainbow Six
*Hesus – Ronald Joel
pickIe. – Ryan Wilkinson
Hobbes – Matt Bennett
Retinal – Cameron Day
Dyl – Dylan Motley
Hatman_77 – Joshua Block
Grap3_Juic3 – Ryan Welch
NamesPeter – Peter Kim
Super Smash Bros.
Mizzou Black
*Kiodahawk – Scotty O’Dell
Radish – Christopher Conrad
Big Al – Ali Dowlatshahi
Buttered Toast – Kwenton Hunter
Slippy – Grady Todd
Mizzou Gold
Blind – Dalton Hendrix
Zslash – Joshua Waitsman
Giggles – Grant Teters
Chairman – Evan Teters
Jimothy – Jordan Asmus
Valorant
*Crimson – Jacob Higgins
Krinklebein – Blake Kronsbein
Piggy – Devin Donnelly
NamesPeter – Peter Kim
AlsoSugar – Jason Mickle
*= Team Captain
Stay tuned to our Twitter (@MizzouEsports), Discord (discord.gg/Mizzou), and Twitch (@MizzouEsports) to watch these club teams compete throughout their leagues in the fall and spring semesters.