Behind competitors Gabriel Lopez, George Francis, Cesar Chogoya, Pierce Ray, William Rossley, and Joshua Manning, the fourth-seeded Buccaneers defeated top-seeded Northern Virginia Community College 3-0 on Sunday to advance to the championship match.
Blinn will face No. 2 seed Bryant & Stratton College (Hampton, Va.) in the finals at 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 1.
“This took a lot of work going back to the start of last August,” said Lopez, who serves as the Overwatch squad’s team captain. “Coming into last semester we were a very low-rated team, we had a lot of players who were brand new to the game, everybody was new to the scene. Now, the amount of work that I’ve seen these guys put in is amazing, and just off that alone I can absolutely see us going all the way after this huge win tonight.”
Blinn’s gaming arena, located inside the Coatney Center on the Blinn-Brenham campus, was filled with cheers as the Buccaneers dominated the eight-team tournament’s top team from start to finish. Blinn captured wins in all three maps to oust the previously undefeated Nighthawks.
(Pictured: Blinn College’s George Francis competes against Northern Virginia)
“We were all so confident going into this tournament because we’re a family,” Francis said. “This is not just a game to us; we all take this seriously and put hard work and dedication into what we’re doing here.”
Blinn will vie for its first national title next week and has already secured an invitation from the NJCAA to be its Overwatch representative in the Collegiate Esports Commissioners Cup (CECC), a nationwide tournament pitting two- and four-year programs against each other in a winner-takes-all competition. The CECC will take place May 6-8 at the Gateway Center Arena in Atlanta, Ga.
“We’ve struggled with the mentality in the past where one negative thing could bring the team down and things would spiral from there,” said Blinn assistant coach Kyle Murto, who oversees the Overwatch team. “We overcame all of that and grew up and improved to become what I think is a pretty formidable team.
“Tonight, we just kept at it; we never lost the mentality that we were just going to keep pushing forward, and that’s sort of been our mindset since the fall semester – just keep pushing and improving until we get to where we want to be. That was our key point tonight.”
Blinn has competed in intercollegiate athletics since 1903 and captured 42 NJCAA national championships since 1987.
