MENOMONIE (December 8, 2021) - UW-Stout's Overwatch Esports team got off to a slow start, but turned the season around when the team started to gel as the semester went along.
The Overwatch team competed in NACE competition and the Overwatch Collegiate Homecoming tournament.
Overwatch coach
Tobey Riedmann said not being able to scrimmage together during the summer hurt the team early.
"We started off weak due to not being able to scrim over the summer, but quickly improved and managed to secure an 8-3 record," Riedmann said about NACE play. "This tied us for third in our group, but we lost a tiebreaker to secure groups (play) because we lost early on to a team that we could definitely beat now."
Riedmann reflected on the slow start, but acknowledged it was a good semester for Stout Overwatch.
"Overall, it was a solid season, and I can't help but think we would have made playoffs if we had started practice earlier, an unfortunate symptom of the weird transition over the summer," Riedmann said.
The same scenario occurred in the Homecoming series, Riedmann said. The Blue Devils dropped their first two matches, but bolted back with eight wins to finish 8-2 overall in the series and qualify for the top groups of 32 teams.
"In groups we won against Carnegie Mellon to secure 17-24 place in the tournament out of 300 teams, before falling to Boise State," Riedmann said. "Boise State is a well-developed program that offers scholarships to their players and employs professional coaching."
The Boise State coach was the 2020 Esports Collegiate Coach of the Year and had encouraging words for the Stout program.
"UW-Stout is definitely a team we will see again in the future," the Broncos' coach Doc Haskell said.
"It was exciting to compete against these top schools and get some recognition, I am excited to see what our program can do against these top schools once we have more time and resources," Riedmann said. "During the groups stage the community did a poll for the top teams in college esports, and we managed to secure (a) top 32 (placing)."
"We had a great season with a lot of growth for the team," Riedmann said. "Our next goal for the program should be to increase our community interaction by setting up a consistent stream team to have all of our matches put out there.
"We have a strong and motivated team; we just need a consistent way to push our matches to the public. Having someone to actively manage our twitter, stream our matches, and engage with the community would bring our program to the next level."
Stout will return to action during the second semester.
