Sam Spiegel and Matthew Marshall, both members of the Loyola esports team, are very excited to start a new year of esports. Spiegel, a junior majoring in accounting, is the captain of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate team, which has just finished its tryouts for this year.
Spiegel began playing Fortnite in 2020 after a knee injury cut his basketball career short. Spiegel began playing Super Smash Bros and joined his high school’s esports team. Spiegel went on to win state championships for both his junior and senior years and decided to keep his esports career going here at Loyola.
Esports also affects Spiegel in his daily life, as he said, “It feels very non-intrusive, where I can still do the things that I want to do, and it doesn’t get in the way.”
At first, Spiegel was worried that he would not have fun on the team.
“Going into college, I wasn’t really sure if I was going to enjoy it, and at first I struggled a bit with that. But then, as I got to know my teammates better, they’re all chill people and easy to get along with,” he said.
Marshall, the captain of the Overwatch 2 team, is a junior majoring in computer information systems. According to Marshall, he was always competitive, so he naturally gravitated towards video games when he was around the age of 16. In contrast to Spiegel, he did not know about Loyola, so he has a unique story for how he got here.
“I was queuing Overwatch at like, I’m gonna say 2 in the morning, and I ran into a guy on the game that told me about Loyola, so I looked into it more. The esports coach reached out to me and told me that I was a good fit,” Marshall said.
The esports team practices in the esports room, which is in the basement of the Danna Center.
Esports also affects Marshall’s daily life because “It’s a big time commitment, I’d say, I’m in [the esports lounge] at least two hours most days, if not more, for like scrimmages and stuff, and just like on my own time practicing. So you know I’ll schedule school and work around that too.”
In addition to being an individual commitment, it’s also a team commitment, which Marshall showed when he expressed the relationship with his teammates.
“We’re all pretty good friends, and I think that’s what our coaches tried to establish first before. We have a good balance of like we’re friends outside of the game, but also we’re together. We’re teammates first, and I say the relationship with them is pretty good,” Marshall said.
Both the Overwatch 2 and the Super Smash Bros Ultimate teams host tryouts before their seasons start. However, the means by which they select their new team members differ. Spiegel explained the process of recruiting new teammates in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
“So Smash Bros, we’re more like playing the people, and then having them play each other and play us in serious sets to see how good they are.”
This differs from the Overwatch 2 team’s tryout process, in part because, according to Marshall, they normally do not host tryouts. However, Marshall explained that they do have tryouts.
“We get the tryout, and it’s usually a tryout scrimmage, which is basically a 5V5 custom game against another team. And after the games we evaluate their gameplay, their comms, and how they interacted with us. If we like them we do another one, and if we don’t we just go, ‘Alright, thank you for your time.’”
With both teams having added more players to their rosters through tryouts, Marshall and Spiegel lead their teams into a new season with their heads held high, and are looking forward to having both success individually and collectively on their respective teams.
