2023 is on the horizon and so are new opportunities for students at UFV. If you ever wanted to be a collegiate athlete or are looking for a new opportunity to pursue, UFV student Gabriel Peters may have started the perfect program for you. Peters is a third year media arts student who loves gaming and recently started an esports program at UFV.
Peters started his competitive gaming journey at the beginning of last year playing on a team with his friends, some of whom were fellow UFV students, on the popular game Overwatch. Peters’ team performed well and was invited by the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) to participate in the next NACE starleague season. After a successful season, Peters’ mind started to cook up ideas on how he could grow gaming at UFV and give students a new opportunity to get involved.
Bringing an esports program to UFV was not an overnight process and took Peters countless hours and emails to bring to fruition. “In the beginning it was a lot of emails to UFV athletic director, Steve Tuckwood, and Ashley Jones, the membership director at NACE.”
“Upon talking with Tuckwood and a few other people around the school, I decided I would take this on, which was something that gave us the opportunity to compete in this competition,” Peters said about the forming of the program.
Peters enthusiasm for esports is what makes this program so exciting: “for myself, it’s become a little bit of a second job, which is something I’m really excited to be doing at the moment, working on building this program and seeing it jump from nothing to five full rosters and competitive teams in just one semester was something I was really proud of and excited about.”
Esports is a growing sport with more and more viewers joining in each tournament. Gaming is a little bit different than your typical sport, but still takes many taxes on your body. Unlike physical sports, where being a defender in soccer has many differences from playing center on the basketball court, esports athletes are able to compete in many games since more of the skills are transferable. This gives athletes lots of opportunities to play different games and also connect with different teammates. Peters discussed some of the things that esports athletes have to do offline to keep them at peak performance: “It’s easy to feel like a gamer can just sit in their chair all day, but staying healthy and mentally well is really important for gaming and so contrary to the nature of a lot of us gamers, getting good sleep and having a good routine with exercise is really important.”
Some of the games that athletes are competing in are Overwatch, Valorant, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, with plans on adding more teams to participate in more esports. UFV esports is actively looking for new members to join the team. If you are interested in joining UFV esports you can contact Gabe at gabe@ufvesportsxkelownagas.com
Esher is a second year law & communications student who is invested in sports. When he isn't filming and writing about basketball, he can often be found washing cars or cutting the grass. Esher hopes to one day enter the field of law enforcement and start his own media group.
