The Aquinas Esports team will be hosting the inaugural WHAC Rocket League Tournament this coming Saturday (Nov. 20), with the first events beginning at 12:00 PM in Sturrus Center. This event will be free admission as the Saints will be joined by Cleary, Concordia, Indiana Tech, Lawrence Tech, Lourdes, and Siena Heights as other WHAC schools with an esports rocket league team.
AQ was going to host the tournament prior to the season, but during that time the Saints finished with a 9-2 WHAC record to earn the #1 seed heading into the tournament. The team started this season 2-2 after being selected to finish second in the WHAC Preseason Poll. A roster move was made and the trio of
Nick Stockert,
Colin Tellkamp, and
Andrew Vainavicz finished the campaign on a seven-game win streak. This included a couple of games that went into game five overtimes against Cleary and Lawrence Tech. The Saints clinched the #1 seed after sweeping both Siena Heights and Lourdes on Oct. 21 and Lawrence Tech dropping to Cleary the same day. Indiana Tech will be the #2 seed in the tournament followed by Cleary, Lawrence Tech, Lourdes, Concordia, and Siena Heights. For streaming information, here is a link to the tournament page:
https://www.whac.net/2021-22_esports_tournament.
The rocket league team also competes in the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) league where they compete with other collegiate programs across the country. That season has ended with AQ going 5-5 in the midwest conference with wins over Cleary, Illinois Institute of Technology, Central Christian College of Kansas, Ferris State, and Siena Heights.
The last rocket league team that Aquinas sports is their academy team that participates in the National Esports Collegiate Conference (NECC) Emergents division and will be starting playoffs today. The team has gone 3-5 so far this season with wins over Campbellsville, Ralph-Macon, and East Carolina.
Super Smash Bros.
The Aquinas Super Smash Bros. team had the opportunity to travel to Ann Arbor, Michigan to participate in the Concordia Fall Smash Invitational where they competed against Cleary, Concordia, Lawrence Tech, and Siena Heights. In the invitational there were three different events including the squad strike (a one-on-one event where they change characters every stock), the doubles (a two-on-two event where they get the same character for three stocks), and a singles (a one-on-one standard format where they get one character for three stocks).
In the squad strike event, all four players finished within the top-15 with Christian Perez Ruiz coming in second,
Steven Figge and
Timothy Hill tying for fifth, and
Jack DeLong finishing in 13th. Perez Ruiz and Hill then teamed up to take home first place in the doubles event, with Figge and DeLong coming in fourth. To wrap up the day in the singles event, Perez Ruiz finished second, Figge came in fifth, DeLong got a seventh place finish, and Hill finishing in 17th. For more information, here is a link to the invatational page:
https://smash.gg/tournament/concordia-smash-collegiate-invitational/events.
The Super Smash Bros. team also competed in the Collegiate Smash Bros. league where they ended their season 2-5 with wins over Concordia-Wisconsin and Texas A&M-San Antonio.
