This past Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, Doane hosted the Nebraska Schools eSports Association (NSeSA) in their annual spring tournament. This is a two-day event held in the Haddix Athletics Building, which brought in around 235 students from 43 different high schools. The students competing for this tournament qualified after playing their regular seasons over the past few months at their individual schools. The tournament was broken into four divisions, which were generally separated by the size of the school and its programs. This weekend, the games played consisted of “Hearthstone”, “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” and “Valorant”. These games were played across 20 PCs. The teams also competed in “Fortnite” the week before online.
This is the second time Doane has hosted this event out of the three years the Doane eSports program has been active. Members of Doane’s eSports team assisted in running this tournament by providing technical support, broadcasting matches, working concession stands and running a recruitment table. Aaron Blackman, Doane’s eSports coach, stated that he hopes that students walk away with a great experience and consider coming to Doane for eSports once they graduate.
Blackman is also appreciative of the collaboration between the Athletic department for providing space and resources to help hold the event, technology services for technical help, event services for coordination, marketing for creating merch to give out at the recruitment table and facilities for assisting with moving equipment throughout the weekend. Doane eSports is also proud to know that they have been asked to hold the tournament again next year.
