The Cal State Fullerton Rocket League team showed out in the Collegiate Esports Invitational, a tournament for the vehicular soccer video game “Rocket League,” as the team won the Big West qualifier before being knocked out of the semi-finals of the championship bracket.
On Jan. 21, Van Wagner Sports and Entertainment announced its partnership with esports tournament and management company Mainline to host the tournament.
The tournament consisted of eight NCAA conferences: America East, Big South, Big West, Metro Atlantic Athletic, Southland, Sun Belt, West Coast and Western Athletic.
Each conference played a single-elimination qualifying tournament from Feb. 2-5 with the winner of each conference receiving a cash prize of $1,000. The top two finalists from each conference then competed in a 16-team championship bracket that would determine who received the grand prize of $5,000 on Feb. 6-7.
Cal State Fullerton faced Cal Poly SLO in the Finals match of the Big West Soccar Qualifier presented by Geico, resulting in a 3-1 victory in a best-of-five set for CSUF. With the win, CSUF locked in the No. 7 spot in the Collegiate Esports Invitation 2021, with Cal Poly SLO placed at No. 11.
While players Danny “Dxnnny” Cruz and Nico “Riddles” Garcia are not new to CSUF Rocket League, this was the first tournament that the team was competing with new addition Logan “Spoodah” Pitman, a professional player and content creator who enrolled at Cal State Fullerton for spring 2021. After the Big West qualifier, CSUF Rocket League head coach Andrew “hiroH” Phillips shared his thoughts going into the tournament.
“This is the first roller coaster of many, it’s best to get rid of all of our nerves and anxieties and find our problems now so that we can dial everything in later. So, we were mostly just worrying about having fun and making sure we were positive throughout the whole experience,” Phillips said.
Garcia said he felt pretty confident going into the qualifier due to the trust he has in his teammates.
“I put a lot of faith in them — that they’re going to be in the correct position to hit the balls or make the correct play. They always got my back. That’s why I played with a lot of confidence in those matches,” Garcia said.
CSUF was put in the spotlight quickly in the round of 16 of the invitational. CSUF fell behind, 0-2, to Stony Brook RL in a best-of-five match, and lost both games by just one goal. When asked about the slow start, Phillips said he had a calm, yet reassuring approach to the situation.
“It was just all nerves, really. It was the first game where we noticed that the stream was really busy, and I think a couple of our players had the stream pulled up or were thinking about it,.” Phillips said. “I sort of told the boys like, ‘These guys don’t deserve to be competing with us or wasting our time.’ It sounds egotistical, but on paper we out-skilled them by like six-straight in-game ranks. It shouldn’t have even been remotely close.”
CSUF completed a reverse sweep on Stony Brook, and won the last three games by a combined score of 18-4.
In the quarterfinals, Fullerton faced the No. 2 ranked seed in the tournament, Grand Canyon University. Carrying the momentum they built from their previous series, CSUF swept GCU 3-0 in a best-of-five match, and faced off against the University of Texas-Arlington (UTA White) in the semifinals.
UTA White was CSUF’s biggest challenge thus far in the tournament. Both teams have similar roster dynamics, with UTA White also having a professional player, Cesar “Adverse” Rea, on its roster.
The match was back-and-forth throughout, starting off 2-2 in a best-of-seven series. The fifth game went to overtime after a few close calls from both sides, and after 3:13 minutes of overtime play, Rea scored the game-winning goal.
UTA White won the series, 4-2, advancing to the grand finals and ultimately defeating No.1 ranked Winthrop University for the grand prize of $5,000 and crowned as the winners of the invitational.
After defeat in the semifinals, Garcia remained humble and said that the better team had won.
“Ultimately, I feel like we had a bad series, and they were just the better team throughout that series,” Garcia said.
Phillips said the team maintained a positive attitude upon its exit from the tournament. He said he felt that nerves did play a part in the team’s first tournament together, but he’s happy with the team’s response and knows that the team is motivated to win even more than before.
As of today, the Collegiate Esports Invitational 2021 brought in over 290,000 viewers. When asked about the advantages that Rocket League has in comparison to other esports, Phillips said that it is much easier to watch Rocket League compared to other video games.
“It’s so much easier to watch, like you don’t have to understand ‘this role does this, this person can only do this,’ it’s three cars flying around hitting a soccer ball, there’s nothing more relatable and easier to understand than that.”
Cal State Fullerton has yet to receive information on its next main event, as Phillips said the team is still waiting for confirmation. Collegiate Rocket League play, funded by developer Psyonix, which is now owned by Epic Games, is set to start next month.
