The Flandreau E-sports team came home with hardware taking second place in Marvel Rivals at the South Dakota State E-sports competition held February 13-14 at Aberdeen Central High School.
E-sports is a relatively new form of competition for students to play online computer games against others in the state. The season is held over the winter months.
“We play everyone from Rapid City Central to Dakota Valley and every small school in between” Thomas Hill, Flandreau E-sports coach said.
The season consists of eight weeks starting in late November. Students choose what games they would like to compete in and have two weeks of competition to practice the format and rules while troubleshooting any connection issues before the season officially starts. Flandreau students then competed in various game titles, including Rocket League, Marvel Rivals, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Mario Kart 8, League of Legends, Fortnite, Minecraft, and online Chess.
The students would play the game they chose on specific days of the week, every week against other schools in the state. There are no class-based competitions like other sports.
During the last week of competition, some of the team game titles had a seeding tournament for state seeding. The Flier team placed second in Minecraft, only losing to Deuel, and second in both Marvel Rivals and Rocket League, only losing to Aberdeen in both of those games.
Heading into state, Flandreau brought 14 students for competition, along with two substitutes in the six different games they were competing.
For the runner-up Marvel Rivals team, state competition consisted of a single elimination bracket of the top 16 teams from across the state. Flandreau was awarded the fifth seed. In two games, they won Match 1 against Lyman’s team both going 3-0.
They were then up against the fourth seed, Rapid City Stevens.
“Stevens was no match for our team, winning the set 3-0 and 3-0 with the matchup not looking close,” said Hill.
Going on to the semifinals, we were up against the top seed, Aberdeen on Saturday morning.
“We spent the night talking strategy and got everything we could have asked for in the matchup, winning the set 2-1 and 2-1, moving Flandreau onto the finals against Dakota Valley,” said Hill.
“Dakota Valley, on paper, should have been the number one seed going into the weekend based on skill of their players. Flandreau put up a good fight, but came up short, finishing the set 1-3 and 0-3 against Dakota Valley,” he said. The Flier team team finished second with some incredibly difficult teams in the bracket.
The Marvel Rivals team consisted of Thunder Eagle Deer Stormy, James Roubideaux, Justin Haugen, Braxten Julson, Mahpiya Weston, Mauricio Pacheco, and two substitutes Creighton Arnett and Alex Nickel.
Flandreau also have several other students in state play.
In Chess, the three Flandreau participants were knocked out in either the second or third rounds and also did not advance past the top 24 in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
For Mario Kart 8, Minecraft, and Rocket League, the Flier teams were in pool play but did not advance further.
Although there was not a bracket at state for Fortnite, Flandreau did come home with a trophy for that game title in a two-person teams. The Flier teams of Franklin Donis Castillo and Owen Kelm, and Wrigley Peper and Sam Schmidt, had previously finished the regular season in first and second place in the state.
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