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“The recruiting process has been interesting,” he said. “I’m learning a whole bunch about the challenges of that, but it’s been a fun learning experience. Building it up, I think, will probably take a little more time than I expected, but I’m excited about it.

“It’s very unique. It’s such a new thing, there’s not a lot of developed ways of how to recruit. Some people don’t know (esports) is a thing, so I’m trying to reach out to more schools with teams and trying to reach out to players in games and on a couple different recruiting sites that have popped up.”

Members of the team include Mickey Blue, Justin Capps, Kyle Leftwich, Jax Matthews, Noah McClain, Nicholas Reak, Sebastian Ruiz and Aleksa Stefanovic — with three dedicated Rocket League players and four for League of Legends. With the size of the team, Seering noted, sometimes the Bearcats use recruits or other amateurs to fill out full squads.

A few of the players are solely esports players, while others are walk-ons from other Brescia programs like baseball and tennis.

As far as coaching goes, Seering added, much of it comes down to strategy and planning.

“With other sports, you can coach a little bit on the physical part — getting faster or stronger,” he said. “With esports, it’s talking about strategy, different combos you can do, and a lot of it comes down to players trying to get more consistent. You’re trying to keep their mind active instead of going into autopilot.”

In college, Seering helped build the esports program at Elmhurst University in Illinois, played for three years at Illinois College and, during his senior year, even coached Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to a conference championship, earning League of Legend Coach of the Year honors along the way.

He has similar goals to achieve at Brescia.

“Within the next two to three years, I want the program to get up to 20 players, and I want us to be one of the best schools in the River States Conference,” Seering said. “We’re not competing in the conference yet, but we had a meeting last year about starting an esports division. That’s probably going to start within the next year or two. I want us to get up to 12 players in League of Legends and eight in Rocket League, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.”

“Right now, we’re one of three or four schools in the conference with varsity programs out of 12.”

With a playing schedule that extends throughout the fall and spring, the Bearcats stay busy — with games also occasionally livestreamed on Twitch.

For those looking to break into the collegiate esports scene, Seering’s advice is to simply stay active.

“It comes down to getting your name out there,” he said. “Number one is joining a high school team if you have one, or trying to get one started. A lot of people don’t realize just how many people would be interested. If you get the ball rolling, it can get going pretty fast. After that, it’s about making yourself available to recruiters and college coaches, staying active on recruiting websites and making sure you’re staying up to date with the game, staying competitive and getting as much experience as possible in a team environment.

“The hardest thing for freshmen coming in is they don’t have a lot of team experience. When you get there, you have to learn to communicate and approach problems together. All of those things take time and are hard to develop quickly.”

With the rise in esports popularity over the last several years — experts expect industry revenues to finish close to $2 billion in 2022 — Seering expects the trend to continue.

“Honestly, the growth has been insane,” he said, laughing. “It’s hard to project because it’s grown more than I could ever imagine. From when I was in college, you could see within three, four years of when it started, about 750 schools have added esports to their programs, either through a club team with a coach or a varsity team. I can’t predit how far it’ll go, but it’s already grown beyond my wildest expectations.”