CANTON — Joshua Lanza starting training for his current job at St. Lawrence University at a very young age.
Mr. Lanza, SLU’s first Esports Coordinator, who beat Donkey Kong Country at age 5, is now living the dream of working full time in the video game field.
Mr. Lanza started his job in July and esports is in its second season as a varsity sport at St. Lawrence University. Its gamers/athletes are treated like every other athlete at the college, Mr. Lanza said.
The SLU Esports progam fields teams in four games, he said. The 28 members participate in the video games Overwatch, League of Legends, Super Smash Bros. and Rocket League and are part of the East Coast Athletic Association.
Before Mr. Lanza’s arrival at St. Lawrence, the fledgling program was run by two volunteer coaches, Eric Shinnick, the executive director of the university’s finance department who still coaches League of Legends, and Kyke Jicha, a systems engineer in SLU’s information technology department who coaches Overwatch.
“They had some great success in student turnout,” Mr. Lanza said.
During the early days of the pandemic, esports was able to keep going while other sports were put on pause, Mr. Lanza said, setting the table for SLU to hire Mr. Lanza
“People wanted to make this team happen,” Mr. Lanza said. “And they really wanted to have esports get promoted at St. Lawrence.”
Once the decision was made to go forward with an esports program, Mr. Lanza said, the administration went all in and made it a varsity sport.
With Mr. Jicha and Mr. Shinnick already working fulltime jobs at the university, the decision was made to look for a full-time coordinator.
At the time, Mr. Lanza was running the esports team at Herkimer Commuity College where he had earned a music degree in 2012. As a student, Mr. Lanza was the Gaming Club’s vice president and played Super Smash Bros., where his main character was King K. Rool, from his childhood favorite, Donkey Kong Country.
Fans can follow the SLU teams on a Twitch channel (search for St. Lawrence University), and Mr. Lanza expects to launch a YouTube channel this spring.
Along with hiring Mr. Lanza to run the program, St. Lawrence University has made a big investment in equipment, Mr. Lanza said.
An old biology lab has been transformed into an esports lab with 16 gaming computers built from the ground up by the university. The team plays on its own internet system, separate from the system used by faculty and students.
St. Lawrence County has a bit of tradition in fostering collegiate esports. SUNY Canton has been a trailblazer in collegiate gaming, and SUNY Potsdam and Clarkson University both have club teams.
The players from the four colleges know each other and see each other at local tournaments, most notably at Canton’s Gamer Craze where Smash Bros. tournaments are held regularly, Mr. Lanza said.
The life of a varsity gamer is not that different from other athletes on campus, Mr. Lanza said. There are regular practices and a crowded schedule.
“In addition to working on your own to farm up your own individual skills with the game, what we call the micro of the game, these little things that you as a player have to develop — the hand/eye coordination, game knowledge,” he said. “The practice time as a team is there for us to coordinate, especially with League of Legends and Overwatch, which require five or six people, those bigger macro game needs, like communication skills, team working skills, knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, learning each other’s play styles, positioning and all this stuff that you need to develop. It’s fairly rigorous.”
There can be one or two matches a week and there are fall and spring seasons that last all semester.
Competitive collegiate-level gaming is different from killing a few hours with friends on the weekend, he said.
Mr. Lanza’s focus right now is on recruiting and figuring out how the seasons are going to work for his players, while avoiding burnout.
“Still, they are going to be playing video games anyway,” he said.
