CheckpointXP On Campus Podcast

Northwood Interview Coach Elson

100 Thieves Internship

Steph Miller, Lilmilly, also known as Milly, is an intern for 100Thieves and takes us through her day-to-day as a student interning for 100T

Collegiate Overwatch Reschedule

On September 8, 2021, Activision Blizzard came under fire from Overwatch collegiate teams after releasing a last-minute schedule that placed numerous matches in the middle of Friday school days for many players in the Pacific time zone. The Collegiate Overwatch Homecoming tournament starts on October 1st

The CheckointXP On Campus team breaks down the Top 25 schools in Esports. 

The basis of our decisions come from 4 main criteria:

• Competitive results
• How many esports that the program is involved in
• Scholarships
• Program Culture

For the full list of the Top 25 Schools in College Esports, head over to CheckpointXP.com 

Crunchyroll Collegiate Esports Involvement

Crunchyroll announced a partnership with the St. Clair Saints, the first varsity esports program in Canada, on August 23, 2021. This marks the first time that Crunchyroll has partnered with a collegiate varsity program.

Florida Tech Esports Facility

Florida Tech has launched its brand new Esports Facility! This was officially announced on August 25, 2021. Throughout the upcoming years, schools involved with collegiate esports have successfully found funding to create a home for collegiate esports players. They have a Competitive Stage, a PC Cafe, and allegedly have (over) 40 games for you to play. Similarly, there is a set space for gamers to have their own desktop and monitor- a personal gaming space for all of our players! 

Adam Antor, Director of Esports for Florida Southern College

Firend of the show, Adam Antor is not the new Director of Esports for Florida Southern College. We talk to him about the new position and what to expect from the College Esports Teams.

Kings Guard Gaming Esports Invitational

Kings Guard, the NBA 2K League affiliate of the Sacramento Kings, teamed up with College Esports International (CESI) to host Inaugural Collegiate Esports Competition with a prize pool of $30K

Tribe Gaming and Razer Scholarship Program

Tribe Gaming and Razer are partnering together to launch a $10,000 scholarship program. They will award an enrolled college student in the U.S. with a “passion for gaming and esports.” Every month a $1000 scholarship will be rewarded and will run for ten months. To apply one should go to tribegaming.gg/scholarships

CLoL 2022 Updates, 2021 Fall Invitational, and more!

College League of Legends is back for another season! RSAA, the Riot Scholastic Association of America, has announced some up-and-coming news for our collegiate League of Legends teams! The first big event is the 2021 Fall Invitational. This will be held online with no cap on participation and competition size! This will not connect to the main College season!

HBCU Esports League Season 2

The HBCU (Historical Black Colleges and Universities) Esports League is back for its second season and this year they have partnered with Cxmmunity, Verizon, Twitch, and Discover. The 22-week schedule to be aired on Twitch.tv/cxmmunity will begin on Aug. 18, 2021 at 7:00 PM EST, and conclude on April 6, 2022.

Division II Esports

Launch Esports will be bringing infrastructure and broadcasting for select Division II, Division III, NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics), KCAC (Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference), Mid-South Conference, Conference Carolinas, Sooner Athletic Conference, and Red River Athletic Conference

GameHERS Awards Show

The *gameHERS are throwing their second annual online awards show to celebrate women in the esports industry in November. It will be streamed on their Twitch channel. Nominations will open up for 36 individual awards and voting will be open from September 5th - 25th.

Eric Perez, coach of Illinois State University Redbirds Esports roster

A week ago, The Illinois State Redbirds unveiled an entirely new roster. What’s interesting about this reveal is that the entire roster is pulled from two NA Contenders teams

Carolina Games Summit

$400,000 prize pool and 200 scholarships for Barton College! What more could collegiate esports ask for! Spoiler alert… a lot more

The nail biting Valorant series, Campus Clutch comes to an electric ending! The twelve finalists played hard, but the winning team, dubbed as the Egyptian Underdogs-- Team Anubis secured their victory at the World Finals.

Last week it was announced that eFuse is partnering with College CoD to host
two events:

• The first event is a Summer’s 8’s Tournament and the second tournament
  is a Summer Open.
• The Summer 8’s Tournament will be happening from July 29th-31st with a
  prize pool of $1k
• The Summer Open will be held from August 28th-29th with a 5k prize
  pool
• Registration for the Summer 8’s is already open for players, recruiting
  coaches, and scouts.

Today, we celebrate the best of the best in College Esports with the first CheckpointXP On Campus College Esports Awards.

Awards include:

• Team of the year
• Player of the year
• Coach of the year 
• Upset of the year
• Production of the year
• Talent of the year (Casters)
• Match of the year
• Breakout team of the year

The NCAA approved a temporary policy to allow college athletes in all three divisions to get paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL). The barebones idea is that the interim policy allows student-athletes to engage in NIL activities that are consistent with the law of the state where their school is located, with the extension of students who attend states with no NIL laws to also be able to engage in this activity without violating NCAA rules related to NIL. Will this lead to the NCAA putting interest into Esports?

NACE has announced a multi-company partnership with CSL Esports, Nerd Street (North America’s largest esports infrastructure company) and Mainline, the leading software company in collegiate esports, to establish NACE Starleague. The league will comprise more than 14,500 students from 600 colleges and universities.

We talk with Cloud9 coach, Emanuel "Hoaxer" Lovejoy about Halo Infinite and if there will be a resurgence in the Halo Esports scene, especially in college. What are the benefits that of Halo Multiplayer now that it's free-to-play?

The Gateway Legends Collegiate Invitational was our first LAN back since the pandemic and sponsored by the Centene Charitable Foundation. It featured sixteen teams, split into four categories. The prize was $10,000.

Coach Adam Antor from Aquinas College to talk about the LAN experience, how his team battled against the local ‘legends’ of CLoL, what new trends emerged from CLoL to the LAN, and what to expect for collegiate in the upcoming months.

eFuse has officially launched “Pipeline”, a ranking system of esports competitors who are college-eligible. Matthew Benson, CEO and Founder of eFuse, equated Pipeline to lists that rank high school athletes preparing to enter collegiate play, ie: the ESPN 100 identifies the top 100 HS basketball players annually.

Also, St. Clair College Opening Public Esports Facility

LG Business Solutions USA has renewed its partnership with collegiate multi-game esports tournament series Battle Academy. Battle Academy is run by UGC EDU, a division of Ultimate Gaming Championship

We're joined by Rebecca Dixon, co-founder of GameHERS, who just launched their first women’s collegiate division with support from Lenovo Esports, Stay Plugged In (SPIN), eFuse, Evil Geniuses’ Geniuses League, and others. Per GameHERS statement, they will provide a ‘safe, inclusive online community for women, non-binary and femme-identifying students who game and/or have a desire to work in the gaming industry.’ 

Level Next moving to the next massive esport of Overwatch, this time joined by Cheeze-It Grooves.

We get some CLoL insight with Jonathan " Hollywood" Song of Bethany University on how it felt to be in the semi-finals against Maryville, improvements from Northern Conference, what to expect next for CLoL and Bethany.

The inaugural Level Next Rocket League Spring Showcase Championship concluded this past weekend and Akron came out on top of the tournament. While the in-game competition didn’t differ much from typical CRL competitions, the presentation, production, and, most importantly, the bracketing were very different from CRL.