Photo by Kelci Boyd
Levon Campbell III
Staff Writer
Jackson State University’s E-sports team will participate in a fighting tournament on Oct. 27. In this virtual event, they will compete by playing “Mortal Kombat”, a well-known fighting game. This will be the first fighting tournament the team has competed in since they started last year.
Last semester, the team mostly focused on shooting games like “Apex Legends”, “Call of Duty”, and “Fortnite”. This year the team wants to expand to other genres in the gaming space.
Nathan Towery, Ph.D., serves as the head coach of the esports team and stated that he was excited about the team going into new genres.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for our program to expand and it’s great that a new genre can get us to compete against another program and help grow our esports program overall,” Towery stated.
Towery also feels that adding new genres is a great way to get other people to join the team.
“It’s great that we had fps titles that we competed in as well as sports games like Madden and 2K. So, it’s great to add another genre in there and expand because we want every student who plays video games and all types of genres to have a space and compete so it’s great to broaden our horizon in that regard,” said Towery.
The team is also trying to have regular meetings every week so more students can come in and see what the club is about. They plan to host events where they go to different dorms around the campus and faceoff with students in games like “2K”, “Madden”, “Call of Duty”, “Mortal Kombat”, “Street Fighter”, and more to give students a sense of what the club is all about.
Towery gave a summary of what happened last semester with the team and what they learned from it.
“We brought Tougaloo over to compete in “Madden” and “2K” and we did on-campus tournaments with students,” said Towery. “We competed in the “Apex Legends” open tournament. Unfortunately, we never won any of those but we learned from it. The open tournament was against more than just college students, we faced professional teams and amateur teams.”
Jackson State Students are finding out about the e-sports club, and some are interested in joining since the club gives a way for the HBCU to be like other universities and gives the students more chances to be themselves.
Ashton McLin, a junior journalism and media studies major from Madison, Miss., talked about how it was good that Jackson state has an esports club that builds opportunities for students who want to go pro at that level.
“I think it’s good that JSU has an esports club like other universities because it is something that we need, and it builds up opportunities for the students,” McLin said.
Darius Johnson, a sophomore psychology major from Compton, Calif., thinks it is great that JSU has an esports club and he hopes that they win their first fighting tournament,
“It’s cool that we have an esports team because games do a lot for people like lowering stress and I hope that they win,” Johnson said. “I would love to join, especially if they participate in “2K” tournaments.”
The team competed against Jarvis Christian University virtually and was streamed on Twitch on Oct. 27.
If you would like to join, the team meets on the second floor of the H.T. Sampson Library. For any additional information, check out their Instagram page @JSUESPORTSCLUB.
You can also reach out to Dr. Towery via his email address: nathan.a.towery@jsums.edu.
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