The Ohio State Overwatch premier scarlet team pushes the payload against Florida Atlantic Oct. 4. Credit: Lucas Lumbra | For The Lantern
While Ohio State football looks to kick off its season Saturday, the Overwatch team looks to get back on track.
The Ohio State scarlet premier Overwatch team has played in four matches within the Varsity Invitational Tournament. The team has struggled as of late in competition play, with one win and three losses in the tournament.
The team’s impressive outing in the TESPA (formerly Texas Esports Association) Split Preseason Tournament came to an end last weekend. In the tournament — which hosted 500-plus teams — the team landed in the top 16. But the elimination compounded with losses from the varsity tournament has generated some frustration amongst the team.
“It puts a cloud over everything, especially knowing the competition isn’t going to get any easier, but these are the teams we need to be playing against not only to prove we belong in this tournament but also one of the top programs in collegiate Overwatch, which we are capable of doing,” Lucas Lumbra, a fifth-year in communications technology and analyst for the premier team, said.
Drew Brown, a fifth-year in computer science and engineering and support player for the team, said that the competition in this tournament is much stiffer compared to the TESPA preseason tournament.
“In this tournament, there are definitely some bigger names,” Brown said. “I’m not gonna lie, our bracket is pretty tough compared to what we had to deal with in the split.”
Moving forward, the scarlet team will play in two more matches this week to close out the round-robin stage of the tournament. The first match will be Saturday against Illinois State and the second will be played Sunday against Miami (Ohio).
Lumbra said the team hopes to win both matches in order to have a chance at going straight to the playoff phase of the tournament. However, the team could be part of the bottom half group of teams playing in another bracket, known as the play-in bracket if they lose just one of its weekend matches.
Brown said that bypassing the play-in round would create an easier path for the scarlet team.
“It’s really important to get to that point because we won’t have to play as much and will be able to study a little bit more of the main competition instead of having to worry about other teams along the way,” Brown said. “We would have a lot easier time just being able to buckle down and study up for what we need to do.”
The losses that have been suffered didn’t come without something to learn from them. Overwatch is a game that consists of different team compositions, which means there are different lineups of characters that can create different advantages in competitive play. Going into this tournament, the scarlet team had been playing one particular composition, but learned through one of its losses that changes could be made, Lumbra said.
The change in the play style of the team has been recent, and with that change, a sub at one of the positions on the scarlet team has been practiced.
Justin Yancey, a third-year in economics and a tank for Ohio State, has been given a chance to show his diverse character pool at the tank position, moving up from the gray team and starting with the scarlet team this week in practice, Lumbra said. Although Lumbra said the move is an experiment and not a full-blown swap, Yancey will get an opportunity to prove himself with the scarlet team this weekend.
“We haven’t fully locked him in yet. He scrimmed with them for the first time yesterday and I feel like he played really, really well,” Lumbra said. “I’m positive to keep him in that lineup for a while, but obviously things can change.”
Although the team came into the tournament with high hopes, Lumbra said its play in the tournament to this point has been a wake up call and they’ll learn and grow from the slow start.
“I think it has shown us that we have a long way to go, and not in a bad way, but it’s kinda telling us that we still have a lot of work to do,” Lumbra said. “I think we have seen good stuff and it’s experience more than anything and we’re expecting to do well in the play-ins, if it comes to that, and we’ll make the playoffs, one way or another.”
