- Electronic sports or Esports are a growing part of intercollegiate sports competition.

Three schools in Wyoming have fully accredited Esports programs, the most successful in Torrington at Eastern Wyoming College.

A three-person Eastern team recently won a national Esports championship.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(bright music) It's hardly news anymore that the world of college sports is changing through free and easy transfer rules, and the court-ordered permission for college athletes to seek and receive payments from colleges.

But a lesser known element of college competition is the emergence and growth of electronic sports, known more commonly as Esports, with video gaming at the center of the competitive stage.

- [Gamer] You go toward boxcars, getting shot.

- Of the three nationally sanctioned college Esports programs in Wyoming, Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington has emerged as the leader, with three whiz kids in the video game called Fortnite, Ryder Tillard, Alan Woodard, and Bridger Bruce winning the National Collegiate Championship earlier this year.

The Esports program that Eastern offers was created with the full endorsement and funding from the college, which created a dedicated gaming lab and competition venue for the team.

Competitors have custom audio, video, and computing equipment, specialized chairs, team jerseys, even customized shoes.

And there's also a full-time coach, Caleb Spitzer.

You've had a major accomplishment here in your first year of the sanctioned program, which was winning a national championship.

- Yes, sir.

- What was that in exactly?

- Fortnite, we participate in several different titles, but Fortnite was the one we took the national in.

- I'm hoping that a lot of people watching the show know what Fortnite is, but if someone didn't and we're asking you to define it, what would you say?

- Fortnite is a battle royale third-person shooter.

That means that you jump into a a group of about a hundred different people, and you're all competing to be the last person standing.

- Battle royale.

So contrast it with another popular sort of game that isn't that, so that people might get the sense of what we're talking about.

- Yeah, one of the first games to come out that involved shooting was Doom, the original Doom, where you were kind of scrolling around running through rooms.

This is a different perspective.

So instead of just seeing your gun, you're kind of looking over one of your shoulders.

And it's akin to that where you're running around shooting stuff, but you are in a large-scale map that kind of changes throughout the year.

And you, like you said, are dropping out, the whole, about a hundred other players, and you're all running around scavenging.

But I would make it akin to Doom.

- Why Fortnite?

- We had the players for it.

One of the first things.

So the NJCA who we play through offers a variety of titles.

- I always stop when I hear people use initials.

- Yes.

- NJCA, National Junior College- - Athletic Association.

- Athletic Association.

- Yes, Esports, it's an E at the end of it.

- So it's the same governing body that the basketball team and the volleyball team compete under as well.

- Yeah, it's technically a separate kind of branch, but it is part of that same exact- - That's why I mentioned that, just because I wanna establish for everybody who didn't know this or doesn't know it, or my question, there's absolute legitimacy here.

This is a sanctioned college competitive Esports program, and there are dozens and dozens, more than a hundred, maybe more than that, around the country.

- Yep, there's three in Wyoming itself, actually.

- What are the other two?

- Laramie County, and then Northwest College.

- I see.

Your team was undefeated throughout the year before heading into the postseason, as we call it.

And I'm not trying to use these cute little quotes around things, that's what it was.

There's a season, there's a postseason, there's a championship.

So week to week to week over what, seven or eight, a couple of months it was.

What does the team do exactly?

- So each week we compete, it's seven to eight weeks, like you said, once a week on Monday nights is Fortnite, specifically.

each title has its kind of night of the week.

And you are queued against, it's called the Swiss Rounds or a round robin, kind of depending on how many teams there are.

But you compete against all the other schools in your bracket.

So you're put into a region, whether that's West or Central, East, kind of however they divide it.

Usually they try to put you kind of location-wise, and then as the numbers need, they push people one direction or the other.

And so we were put into one of the two Central brackets, and we competed against six or seven other schools in that bracket, and fought every week for the highest score, at which point there was a postseason, and then that seeded into the national competition.

- And you won every week.

- And we won every week.

- And right up to the very end.

- Right up to the very end.

- Hoisting the trophy.

- Yes, sir.

- There's a time limit on it.

How does it- - Fortnite itself has a time limit.

There's a ring that closes around to the map itself to kind of reduce the space and force people to interact with each other.

So that kind of puts an artificial time limit on it.

Technically, there's no hard time that stops it, but usually 20 minutes, I would say, 20 to 30.

- You chose Fortnite from among the numerous competitive options.

What were the couple of other games, for example, that Esports, you might do in the future, for example?

- Yeah, League of Legends, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Rocket League, Call of Duty.

Anything that has kind of a multiplayer aspect usually has some Esport attached to it.

- What do you think of Fortnite yourself as a game?

Love it?

- Fortnite, I mean, it was one of the first battle royales, so as kind of a groundbreaking game, I respect it.

I don't personally claim it to be my favorite game to play.

Battle royales, as a whole, are quite fun.

They're quite easy to jump into.

- How did you discover your team?

- So I started by making a lot of visits to a lot of the high schools in our service area.

So the college is kind of divided that way.

So I drove up to Douglas and drove up to Upton and Glen Rock and down to Yoder and just kind of visited a lot of the ones that would have me, and just set up a little table, talked at lunchtime, various things, and just, hey, this exists now, come to us, come show me what you have and we'll talk about it.

And Ryder Tillard and Alan Woodard were the first two last fall that we had jump in, kind of in the early phases.

And then the spring we had quite a few more join and some more joining in for this next fall.

- How did the program get started at Eastern?

Was that before you were here, or were you involved in that as well?

- No, I was the very beginning of it.

So the previous athletic director, he was tasked with finding ways to kind of increase the sports activities that we had, kind of reach new audiences.

And one of those that he had heard about, and I don't know how he had ended up hearing about it, but one of 'em was Esports.

And so when I had heard that they were talking about that, I had a pretty good background in Esports before this, but more on the hobby kind of for fun side of things, never as an official job.

And so when I spoke with him, he told me what they were looking for.

I told him, I believe I could make that happen for you.

And so they eventually appointed me at the board meeting and I started in.

- I don't know a lot about Fortnite, but I know, I'm interested, I know something about it.

I know that one of the strengths of it is, well, you mentioned one, the sort of battle royale structure, which even beginners can immediately have fun playing.

It's not just a disaster.

You can enjoy it enough at the start to keep playing it, not get discouraged, and again, get good.

Is that fair to say?

- Yes, absolutely.

- Okay.

How good were these guys when you found 'em, when they joined your team?

- So Ryder was already unreal, had been playing it basically since it came out, for years and years, his whole life through middle school and high school.

Alan was involved in Fortnite in the early days and took a hiatus kind of in the middle, and then was kind of starting to taper back into it when I spoke to him and we had him join the team, but Alan performed well on some other titles as well throughout his life.

- And these are local guys, right?

- Yep, Ryder from Douglas and Alan is from Torrington itself.

- So these are small town guys who have achieved obviously national caliber skills in the game.

- Oh, medallion is right here.

Here, let me just hop in with you.

- Cut.

- Let's go.

- So Caleb, when we're starting a new competitive sports program at our community college, you're not just saying, "Hey, set up a computer in your dorm room or in the backseat of the car, standing with your phones.

The college created space for it.

And this is the Esports Lab, and that's where we're gonna go in and see now, where we have computers all over the place.

So you told us before we came on camera that there are times when there are even more computers in here than there are now, which is a lot.

But so, again, there's some resources had to be dedicated to this.

Were you part of setting it up saying, look, if we're gonna do this right, here's what we ought to at least start with.

- Yep.

- Were you at one of these when the coach came to your high school, that's how you learned that this was gonna happen?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

What'd you think?

- I just saw how much of a big opportunity that could have been, and I took it.

- [Steve] And you played a lot already.

- Yes.

- You figured you'd be pretty good at this?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I think I'd fit right in.

- Turns out you were.

And Alan, you played, but at that time you weren't at the level that Ryder was, and there's no shame in saying that because his level was incredible at the time.

- [Alan] Definitely.

- How did you find out about the Esports program at Eastern?

- When I was registering, I came up here to register for classes right before classes started last fall.

And Caleb, right here was the guy to show me around.

And he showed me this cool Esports lab and said there's gonna be an Esports team.

And I said sign me up.

- How did you get better?

- Playing a lot with Ryder, honestly.

I've played plenty of other games and I've played plenty of other games competitively as well.

Fortnite was just not one of the ones I've played competitively.

I've played all sorts of other shooters.

So having that background in other shooters definitely helped out when it came to playing Fortnite.

But being able to play with Ryder and play in these high-ranked lobbies and get used to all of these extremely good players, that's kind of what got me good at this game.

- Ryder, we saw you both had headsets on as you were playing.

Why do you play with, what I call the sort of game controller, and Alan plays with the keyboard and the mouse?

- Yeah.

I just use a Xbox controller.

I know, it's just feels better for me.

He uses keyboard.

- [Steve] You got really good doing it that way.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

What sort of things do you say to each other during a game?

For example, like in this game.

- Just about calling out everything we're doing, make sure we're on the same page and just coordinated.

- So you can see the same stuff.

You can warn somebody or suggest something.

At the national tournament, how big is the field?

- There are eight teams total that make it into the national tournament.

- And how do you qualify for national?

- So it's based off of your regular season records.

So you play through regular season, your seven or eight matches, you have your score there going into playoffs, seeds you the top four, walk into the regional playoffs, and then the top two from each playoff go into that.

- [Steve] You fought your way there.

You guys are what years in school?

- I'm going on my second.

- Same, second year.

- [Steve] So you'll be back next year.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] Bad news for the rest of the Fortnite world.

You guys are coming back.

And your teammate's name is what?

- Bridger.

- Bridger.

Is he coming back too?

- He is.

- He is.

So, well.

- Yeah.

The trio's coming back, and they're gonna, two more tries to run at three, three championships in a row.

There is a fall and a spring season.

Each has their own national and regional kind of competition.

- So you guys are in your, you just finished your freshman years, essentially?

- Yeah.

- Are you majors in yet?

Have you declared that?

- I am in ag business.

- No kidding.

- Yeah.

- So you're a ranch kid.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] Farmer ranch kid.

How about you, Alan?

- I'm doing interdisciplinary studies and communications.

I plan on going to law school after getting my bachelor's in communications.

- Is there a part of the game that you think you're, either one of you, you think you're the best at?

- Just trying to be best I can be at all the fields, if that's aiming, shooting, just callouts, positioning.

There's a lot that goes into it.

- Alan, when you say you got better by playing with Ryder, what were some of the first things you realized you were getting better at doing, that maybe you wouldn't have thought about before?

- Not dying (laughs).

When I first started this game, I'm used to a lot of first-person shooters, so that's kind of where we're seeing it, from a first-person view, as if you're looking.

This is a third-person shooter, so the whole game, you're always looking behind your character.

You're looking down at your character's back.

So getting used to the third person versus first person was definitely a huge hurdle.

And being able to spend so much time playing in these extremely hard lobbies with Ryder is kind of what helped me develop the skill sets I needed in here: getting used to the maps, the gun style, how everybody plays, being able to build.

You know, it's a whole lot of things that came into play to be able to call myself good at this game.

- [Steve] Do you call yourself good now?

- Oh, definitely, absolutely.

- You should.

- Fortnite I know is admired for a couple of different reasons.

One is that it's a multi-platform game.

I could play it on my phone or on my PlayStation or my Xbox, and everything sort of in between.

And that's not true of every game.

- It is not true.

- You have to have a proprietary system.

You gotta lay out a lot of money for it.

And Fortnite is free to play as well, in almost every case, right?

- Yep.

In every case it is.

That was a new funding model that kind of started coming out in kind of the mid-2010s.

It was this free to play kind of live service game where you accessed it basically online, and then you didn't pay anything.

And the money they make is from what are called cosmetics.

- So cosmetics being... - Like different skins in the game.

So your character looks different, your gun looks different when you run around.

And that was kind of a non-essential, but people enjoy personalizing things and buying things.

- Was there any objection to starting it here?

Was it a suggestion that the higher authorities at the college immediately adopted?

What do you know about that?

- After I had spoken to a few people and kind of talked about what I know Esports can be, and kind of my idea of what setting up one looks like, I think it paired well with kind of what they were already thinking.

And so from the top down, I've just had support from day one, from the board members and the president and vice presidents down to the staff and faculty around the building.

- We're on campus now, and we see recognition being paid to the champion, there are posters around.

Some viewers might not quite understand what we're getting at here.

We see the basketball team working out, and they're running wind sprints and they're doing running plays and doing drills, and all you guys do is just sit around playing video games all day some people might say.

As a coach, what do you do?

How do you and your team prepare and practice?

- So I start by sitting down with the players and getting to know where they're at skill-wise.

With like Ryder and Alan, although at different skill levels, they both had a pretty good understanding of Fortnite as a whole.

If somebody doesn't have a solid understanding, we start with the basics of aiming, movement, tactics, those type of things.

- And you had some players like that?

- Yes.

- They were here to learn.

They're beginners.

- Absolutely, I got some coming in this fall that are more beginners.

Last spring we had Bridger join who was also on the national team.

And he already knew the game well.

And so what we worked on with those players is communication, holding your own mentally.

So when you are playing long stints of games, so like in the Nationals, there's times where you're playing a best of five, and maybe you're playing two of those back to back.

So you have up to 10 games of Fortnite to play to take home a national title.

And that mental stability, performing at the top level consistently over that time period, building that kind of mental and physical stamina with moving the mice and stuff is important.

- Sort of like with any sport, I mean, playing in the backyard, you can go and sit down for a while and have a bite to eat or take a drink or something, or come back later when you feel like it.

At the tournament level of any activity, there's so much more intensity, and the expectations are higher.

- Yeah.

- Is there any sort of physical training itself of, I don't know what, dexterity or it's strength or quickness or anything like that that comes into this particular game?

- So I like to categorize games in kind of two segments: macro and micro.

Macro being kind of that head knowledge, that grand understanding of the strategy and the ideas behind it that are outside of the game, and then the micro being your execution in the game.

Fortnite leans towards that micro side of it.

So it's about kind of executing well.

You have to be able to aim at somebody and click and hit the shots on them.

You have to be able to move quickly from A to B without hesitation, without screwing up your inputs.

And it's really, really focused on that.

There is that macro kind of knowledge side to it, but it's much more focused on that execution.

So a lot of what we work with of the upcoming kids is getting that micro down.

Okay, so this is your aim sensitivity on your mouse, 'cause mice have different sensitivities.

So if I move it a little bit or move it a lot, how far does the cursor move.

Those settings and those things you get used to, and then you just do it over and over and over and again so it kind of becomes an extension of yourself.

- I know there are gaming competitions at the professional level which draw big crowds of people sometimes.

You'll have people coming together all at once to play.

Adding to this competitive nature of it, you're actually across the room or the table or the couch from other players.

That's not typically what your team did, at least at the beginning here, right?

- No, so we played in our Esports lab where the NJCA has some rules, is where the players can't be contacted during the match for integrity.

And there's certain kind of rules for broadcasting and things like that.

And so they're in the room playing alone, communicating with each other.

And then between the rounds I can walk in and talk to them about what went right, what went wrong.

But there is not large crowds as of now playing around them.

- So what would you say the level of, based on what you know about that, of this sort of professional Esports competition compared to the recreational that someone could do in the basement, but in terms of, as you understand the skill level of the players, how good are they?

- My players are very good.

They're not, professionals are playing 12 to 14 hours a day.

They have these regimens, they have foods and nutritionists, and the teams bring all these people in to do these things.

We're not there.

But we're not just lounging on the couch playing for funsies either.

We're I think pushing towards that professional side where I encourage exercise, I encourage healthy diets, I encourage getting sleep and eating good the couple of days- - It's not just Doritos and Mountain Dew.

- It's not just Doritos and Mountain Dew.

I don't recommend those before a big match.

- And you found the players bought into this approach that you were taking, even though that's not what they were used to.

- Yeah, I think that it's pretty easy to adapt when you feel serious about something, to really wanna get behind it and those aspects of it.

And obviously, their lifestyle, Ryder is from a ranch, so he does a lot of exercise kind of when he's not playing games, just by the nature of helping run a ranch.

But other kids are definitely adapting into that, keeping your mind and your body at least somewhat fit, not just filling it with junk, because even six to eight hours sleep difference changes your reaction time by like 8%.

And that can matter a lot at the high end, because when you're competing at these high levels in any sport, but Esports as well, the tiny differences are what make the differences.

- Yeah, you win or lose based on- - Tiny little one missed click here.

Yeah.

- And so of course it's easier to get people to buy in when you start having success.

- Yes.

- Now, did you expect the success that you've had, or how are you able to contemplate that?

- I always hoped, right?

The grand hope is that we'd come in and just start kicking everybody's butt.

I didn't necessarily expect it, 'cause I didn't know, not being a long-term Wyoming resident, I just didn't know the demographic around here and kind of what the intake would be.

I knew kids like video games, and I can train a kid how to play a video game all day long.

And so I knew we could do well.

But coming first nationally is happy, not surprised, but a happy expectation, hope met.

- You used the term video games.

And I was talking with my videographer, Matt Wright, on the way over, if I used that term, will I instantly be labeled as some old sort of old fogy, because of course when I started playing games and I was about these guys' age, and I was, there was a time when I was, putting a quarter into a machine and playing Battle Zone or something, and later was the home PCs stuff got started and we had a Nintendo, a Wii in the house, that kind of thing.

But that's still a term that's used.

- Yes.

- Video game is not a totally antiquated thing.

- There's no real way to unantiquate it, 'cause that's what it is.

- That's what it is.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

The thing that has changed, though, is that the world of gaming, in case any of our viewers are saying, "Well, how come you're taking this seriously?"

My answer would be how come you're not taking it seriously?

It's enormous.

How many people play even semi-serious recreational levels of the games, the type of games you're talking about?

- The last statistic that I looked at, it was at about half the population on Earth at some point was playing a video game at some level.

Esports itself is looking to be pushing about a $4 billion industry worldwide, walking for a mid-level this year.

It's growing, it's growing fast.

There are adoption issues and some hiccups along the way as any new thing is.

But it's growing and it's been growing.

- $4 billion is enough to get anybody interested, I would think.

- I would hope so.

- The level of ingenuity in of course creating the games and constantly updating the games and keeping them current, keeping them fresh, keeping them complex enough that you're never, I mean, this isn't the true with all games, but that you're never finished with it.

There's always more.

And then the creativity is just staggering.

We did a show with the director of the Wyoming Symphony who's actually associate director of the Colorado Symphony too.

And he said, "Well, of course we did a full symphony, a symphony concert from video game music."

So there's storytelling, there's music, there's lyrics, there's poetry in it, there's visual art in it.

There's really no element of creativity that isn't involved in it, is there?

- In video games, none.

I can't think of any.

I think games have sounds, whether that's music, whether that's the footsteps, whether that's the gunshots.

Games have visual art, because that's basically all they are is visuals on a screen.

Games have strategies and balances, so you can't have something that's way stronger than everything else, 'cause then everybody will just do that one thing.

So there's guys that they're entire job is to balance the gameplay of the video game.

There's guys that do the lore, the story behind the game and what that means and kind of the development of that.

There's people that are running the productions, there's people that are running the marketing, there's people doing outreach, telling people about the game, getting teams involved.

I can't think of a single, I mean, you don't go mine for a video game.

- There's drama, there's theater in it, there's acting in it.

- Yep.

- And then it's also this incredible technical achievement.

And of course, I mean, creativity and technology have gone together since someone invented the piano or before.

And that's not itself unusual, but when you think about the melding of those things, it's just fantastic.

Even if you don't participate in it, you better understand what you're dealing with here.

What were you doing when you heard that Eastern Wyoming College was starting an Esports program?

- Officially, I was working at Game and Fish doing some boat checks and stuff.

So my degree was in biology with a focus on wildlife management.

I grew up in Oregon, then moved to the Oregon Coast.

And so I was kind of looking into just that oceanography, that kind of world.

But on the side, ever since I was a kid, I mean, when my mom was pregnant with me, she was playing Super Mario Bros.

on the couch.

So I think from a very young age I was ingrained with games.

And so my whole life growing up with my brother, we played games a lot.

And then kind of coming out of college, I really started getting involved in kind of the more Esports, e-side of stuff.

- I'm not asking you to defend the video gaming world, because it doesn't need defense.

But I'm sitting here talking to you, you seem to be a well-rounded enough kind of a guy.

You're not sitting alone in your dark room in a hoodie all day.

I mean, it's so far into the mainstream that if you're not appreciating it, you're out of the mainstream in a way.

And as a college student experience, you think it's more than worthwhile.

- Oh, absolutely.

So it's a very open and social atmosphere.

You know, it's a good place to connect with people and to make friends all across the world.

I have friends from everywhere.

I have a buddy in Hawaii that I've been playing games with for the last eight years.

I've never met him in real life, but we send each other Christmas gifts every year.

And, you know, I mean, we play every single night.

You know, it's an awesome experience to be able to play video games and understand just how inclusive it is.

It definitely helps you feel like you're part of something.

- There's a community side of it, there's a competitive side of it.

There's the educational side of it.

You can use them to learn all sorts of things on a more hands-on kind of way.

- That was my next question.

Thank you.

But really true.

I mean, you gain skills in lots and lots of areas that can be applied throughout life.

Absolutely.

- Caleb, thanks for your time and for being with us on "Wyoming Chronicle."

- Thank you.

(light music)