The St. Thomas Aquinas College Esports program, in conjunction with the Department of Athletics, hosted a week-long summer camp on the Sparkill campus for students, ages 13-18, who are aspiring to become high level competitive gamers.
25 student-campers from all over the East Coast took part in learning the skills and fundamentals necessary to improve not only their video gaming talents, but also to try and help them improve their rankings in various Esports games, such as; League of Legends, Fornite, Overwatch and Apex Legends. The campers were also the first to utilize the newly renovated and expanded Spartan Esports lab, which includes the latest computer hardware and software that is being used in the competitive gaming industry today.
Camp staff, including Director of Esports Matt Capell, Head Coach Tristan Holmgren and current Spartan Esports athlete Sidney Reeves (Sr./Yonkers, NY) provided valuable guidance and instruction on a wide variety of topics that are specific to the Esports world. Subjects discussed included mental and physical preparation for competition, team bonding, trusting your teammates and being posititve about outcomes of competition, whether you win or lose.
"This week has been pretty good", said current Spartan Esports Athlete Sidney Reeves. "The kids are having fun and learning so much about the world of competitive gaming. It has been an enjoyable experience for me and I wish we had even more time, so I could teach our campers additional strategies to help boost their rankings for some of the games that we have played."
Head Coach Tristan Holmgren echoed Sidney's sentiments, "It has been a great week, the kids are learning a lot about games like League of Legends and most of our campers will now continue playing the games after camp breaks and everyones goes back home. We hope to see alot of these kids, and some new faces, possibly their friends and classmates, at next year's camp.
In its inaugural year, the Spartan Esports Camp has already garnered local attention, as News12 Hudson Valley/Westchester and Reporter Pete Ruf visited campus to check out all of the action. Watch Here
