Aquinas College

Riley Long enters his second season in the captain's chair of the Aquinas eSports program. Long had a great start his first year, especially with League of Legends. Aquinas' League of Legends team won the NACE Midwest Conference and went on to compete at the national level. The League of Legends team also easily won the WHAC Championship in 2022. 

Competitively, the League of Legends team had the WHAC 2022 Player of the Year and three All-WHAC First Team Players, along with another two All-WHAC Second Team players. The Rocket League team also produced the 2022 WHAC Player of the Year for its respective sport. Rocket League had one All-WHAC First Team player and two All-WHAC Second Team Players. The Overwatch team generated another two All-WHAC First Team players in 2022, giving Aquinas eSports two WHAC Players of the Year, six All-WHAC First Team Players, and two All-WHAC Second Team players across all three WHAC games. 

The eSports team has also had a lot of success in the classroom over the past year. 18 players earned WHAC All-Academic honors for the 2022 season, with six players coming from each of the three sports. 

Long comes to AQ from his most recent position at Michigan Tech University, where he served as the Assistant Director of Esports. While at MTU, Long served as the head of recruitment, marketing, and media for a program that was the first public school esports program in the state of Michigan. He also helped guide the Counterstrike: Global Offensive team to the National Association of Esports National Championship in the spring of 2020.

In addition to Counterstrike: Global Offensive, Michigan Tech fields a competitive esports team in League of Legends, Overwatch, and Rocket League. Aquinas is currently competing in the WHAC for its inaugural season of esports as an official sport along with NACE and the NECC, the National Esports Collegiate Conference.

Along with his prior experiences at Michigan Tech, Long is currently the President, COO, and Co-Founder of Armada Esports, which is his own company that came into existence in the summer of 2017. There he oversees a staff of over 50 people plus professional esport athletes and streamers, while also scouting and recruiting for prospective players/teams in Call of Duty, Counterstrike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, Gears of War, Paladins, PUBG, Rainbow Six Siege, Smash Bros. Ultimate, and SMITE. He also has experience securing and managing sponsorships, while executing creative brand activations with companies such as GFUEL, Patriot, and Esports Arena. 

To go along with the National Championship from Michigan Tech, Long's Armada Esports won the Frostbite Smash Ultimate Crew Battle World Championship in the spring 2020, had four Smash Ultimate players ranked in the global top 50 in the winter of 2019, and had the number one North American franchise in the SMITE Minor League from the fall of 2018 to the spring of 2020. Long also was a Semi-Professional Competitive Call of Duty Player himself from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2014.

Graduating from Michigan Tech in the spring of 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Long will follow in the footsteps of the first Aquinas esports coach in program history Adam Antor, who recently accepted a job with Florida Southern to head up its esports program at the NCAA DII level.