Cougar Esports Seeded 3rd in Inaugural Season Conference Tournament
(Howell, MI)-- The Cleary University Esports team will take the 3-seed into the WHAC Tournament on Saturday, November 20, at Aquinas College. The Cougars went 8-4 in WHAC play to finish the season, only being ranked behind #1 seed Aquinas and #2 seed Indiana Tech.
Cleary's first ever season in Esports, and in particular the game Rocket League, featured a trio of stellar players that the program will be leaning on for the next few years. Rocket League, a game that is similar to a combination of a demolition derby and soccer, features a best of 5 series in each matchup, over 5 minutes of gameplay per round, where the opposing teams of 3 players look to score against their opponents.
Nathan "Roach" Reiber was Cleary's leading scorer, as he scored 48 times this season, which was 5th best in the WHAC, to go along with 21 assists and 60 saves. Kyle "TomKay" Thompson was Cleary's second leading scorer with 39 goals. He also made a team high 65 saves and assisted on 23 goals as well. Ethan "Filly" Filmore made 17 goals to go with 27 assists, and 47 saves on the season.
Looking ahead to the conference tournament on November 20, Cleary will participate in a double-elimnation bracket, and will take on the Concordia Cardinals in the opening round. Cleary won both regular season matchups against the Cardinals this season, going 3-1 in the first matchup, and 3-0 in the second. The league was not a runaway, and Cleary matches up well with the other top-seeded teams, as those series went to at least 4 games in 5 out of the 6 meetings against the other teams seeded 1-4.
All the teams in the tournament will be in the same location, at Aquinas' Sturrus Center, on November 20th. Cleary's first match of the day will take place at 12:00 pm, and fans that will like to watch can watch by going to either Twitch.tv/AquinasEsports or Twitch.tv/AquinasEsports2, based on which match in the bracket is being played.
