The Catawba Campus Series LAN event kicked off on Saturday, April 9th and did not disappoint. We saw six Rocket League teams, 12 Valorant teams and over 25 Smash Ultimate players compete across the day. Many players discussed collegiate opportunities with programs across the country, both in person and online via our platform.
Day 1 Recap
Valorant
The 12 Valorant teams consisted of High School, Community College and Junior College rosters from the Carolinas and border states. Action kicked off with Round 1 matchups, where we saw the featured match between ValorINT vs YTAC (shoutout to YTAC, a local partner of ours). ValorINT took this matchup 13 - 6 with an impressive performance from “Foodsstuff”, a Sophomore from North Carolina, with a 21 / 12 / 10 KDA.
Following this matchup, we saw WPU Pacers face Wake Forest University, with the Pacers taking the match 13 - 7. “Swiz” had an incredible game with a 29 / 10 / 9 KDA with a notable double kill in Round 12 of the game. Off stream we saw Billy’s Bangers win in impressive fashion over Blank, 13 - 0, with “GeZ Justice” having nearly a 5.0 KD.
The next round of matches saw the featured match between Wake Tech & Elon Esports, where Wake Tech edged out the win, 13 - 11. The game had an incredible battle between two players, where “guile”, Senior on Elon, had 30 frags & “E7 Arsh”, Wake Tech, had 27 frags.
The Winner’s semifinals matchups were Smile Factory VS Billy’s Bangers & Wake Tech VS Silly Silvers. We saw Wake Tech take their matchup 13 - 4 with impressive game performances from pChu ( 22 / 9 / 4 KDA ) and E7 Arsh ( 21 / 6 / 7 KDA). Smile Factory VS Billy’s Bangers was the Featured Match on stream, where we saw several notable plays, including an early Round 2 Quad kill from icee, a triple kill in Round 3 from dzana and a 1v1 finish by a pistol headshot by Gira in Round 12. Smile Factory took this game 13 - 5.
The Winner’s finals matchup was a classic, where we saw Smile Factory take on Wake Tech. Smile Factory went down early, where they found themselves 6 rounds down ( 8 - 2 ). However, in their own words, they “took a pause to simply say that we can do this and to start to play more aggressively”, from there, no one looked back. After starting to turn it around, icee grabbed a triple kill in Round 17, Gonchzz grabbed a double in Round 22 and overtime then followed. After a triple overtime, Smile Factory grabbed the win, 16 - 14.
Rocket League
Day 1 of Rocket League featured group play, where each team played each other once throughout the day, in Best of 3 series.
Notable performances from the teams saw team Franklin Storm only dropping 1 game out of 11 games played throughout the day. Franklin Storm was also the youngest team across all titles, featuring a player from the Class of 2026, 2025 and 2024. Johnston CC also had an impressive day, only dropping 2 games out of 11, where those 2 games were to their only series loss of the day in Round 1 of group play to Franklin Storm.
At the end of the day, Franklin Storm grabbed the #1 seed, with a fantastic undefeated performance. Johnston CC followed at 4 - 1, then Wake Forest at 3 - 2, Banana Boys at 2 - 3, Red Hawks 1 at 1 - 4 and Red Hawks 2 at 0 - 5. With only the top four seeds qualifying for Champion Sunday, Red Hawks 1 & 2 both were eliminated.
Smash Ultimate
Smash Ultimate featured a Swiss format to get down to the final 16 teams for Championship Sunday. With many great players, the competition heated up quickly.
Round 1 of swiss saw a few close matches, with “BenIguess” edging “Marcusatomz” 3 - 2, “Mario465” beating “Avi” 3 - 1 and “StaticFrosto” beating “Spade” 3 - 1.
Round 2 of play saw almost all matches going 3 - 0 to the victor, with only “Gjblue” beating Moxort 3 - 1 and “SenorFrog” beating “StaticFrosto” 3 - 2.
Round 3 saw two matches go the distance as the swiss format created matchups close in talent level. “SoulKing” beat “SenorFrog” 3 - 2 and “FoodicOnSumr” beat “Parziva1” 3 - 2. After three great rounds of play, we saw the top three competitors as “Gjblue”, “Master”, and “Mario465”
Round 4 kept things pretty close, yielding no changes to the top three players, just a slight reordering. With things heating up, we saw GjBlue face off Master and take the win 3 - 2, “Jrmy” beating “Blackskins” 3 - 2 and “MyGamerDog” beating “Morpheus” 3 - 2. At the end of Round 4, we saw “Mario365” at first, “GjBlue” at second and “Master” at third.
Round 5 finished off swiss play with some great matches. “GjBlue” beat “Mario465” 3 - 1, “Avi” beat “Static Frosto” at 3 - 2. After our final round, the top 16 players to qualify were: “Gjblue”, “Mario465”, “Moxort”, “Jrmy”, “SoulkingLJ”, “Master”, “Morpheus”, “SenorFrog”, “Blackskins”, “Avi”, “My Gamer Dog”, “Rem”, “Spade”, “StaticFrosto”, “awekin” & “LilHeffy”.
At the end of competition on Day 1, the play couldn’t have been better. Several college coaches were roaming the players, looking for their future recruits for their collegiate teams. Championship Sunday was shaping up to be an incredible day, with two Valorant matches, 3 Rocket League matches and a 16-person single elimination bracket to be played.
Day 2 Recap
Championship Sunday of the Catawba Valley Campus Series LAN Event came to an incredible resolution.
Valorant
Valorant play started with the Loser’s finals match between Wake Tech & Billy’s Bangers. Billy’s Bangers started off quick, grabbing the first two rounds with a double kill by “Koof” in Round 1. Round 4 saw “Sif” take a triple kill to bring the round count to 2 - 2. Following the start, it was all Wake Tech, quickly grabbing a 9 - 3 lead over their opponent. However, that is when 8th grader “Justice” turned it up a notch and the comeback began. Taking 7 out of the next 8 rounds, the match found itself in a 10 - 10 tie. The match ended 15 - 13 with Billy’s Bangers taking the win, led by “Koof” at 28 / 19 / 3 KDA & “Justice” at 21 / 20 / 12.
Next, we saw the Best of 3 Grand Finals for Valorant, featuring the in form Billy’s Bangers & their opponent, Smile Factory. These two did meet in the Winner’s semifinal match, where Smile Factory took the match 13 - 5. We went to Breeze first for Map 1, where the match was back and forth, finding itself at a 9 - 9 scoreline after 18 rounds played. The play was very even, without too many single player moments, but “Astral” did stand out with a double kill in Round 1 and a great defensive round in Round 10. The first map ended at 13 - 9, as Smile Factory won four consecutive matches to take the first map, led by “icee” with a 24 / 14 / 3, followed by opponent “Justice”, Class of 2026 out of North Carolina, with a 17 / 20 / 7 scoreline. Gira, Class of 2022, also played an important role with five spike plants for Smile Factory.
The final map of competition was Icebox for. This map saw a quick run from Smile Factory, where they decisively took the map 13 - 5. “Justice”, Class of 2026, had an impressive performance, capped with an Ace on Round 10. Overally, Smile Factory proved to tall of an opponent for anyone to take a single map off of the entire tournament.
Rocket League
Sunday for Rocket League started with the two semi-final matches, where the soon to be finalists both took their matches quickly. Franklin Storm beat Banana Boys 3 - 0 & Johnston CC beat Wake Forest 3 - 1. This set us up for Franklin Storm facing off against Johnston CC for the Grand Finals of the Rocket League portion of play.
Franklin Storm started off to a great game 1, taking it 4 - 1 with “yags”, Class of 2025 out of Tennessee, grabbing a hat trick. Game 2 was taken by Franklin Storm again, with a fantastic bump play to seal the third goal and game win at 3 - 2. Johnston CC did bounce back, grabbing game 3, 3 - 1. Franklin Storm took the next two games to take the series and championship for Rocket League, with Game 5 going into overtime, where “Adrift” scored the winner! Franklin Storm had an incredible performance all weekend, only dropping two games out of 19.
Smash Ultimate
Sunday started with the Top 16 players from Saturday’s play. After a quick Round of 16, where almost every game was a clean sweep, we found ourselves in the Quarterfinals of play. Here, we saw “Gjblue”, “3Mario465” & “Master” take their respective matches 3 - 2. In the semifinals, we saw two decisive games, where both “Gjblue” and “Master” won 3 - 0, leaving us to a “Gjblue” VS “Master” championship matchup. We saw them play on Saturday, where “Gjblue” won the Best of 5 match 3 - 2. To kick of the finals, “Gjblue” elected to play Dr. Mario & “Master” took Wolf. “Gjblue” took a decisive 3 - 0 lead, looking like the easy victor of the matchup. However, “Master” had other ideas, coming back to perform the reverse sweep and winning the championship 4 - 3. All players performed incredibly well throughout the weekend, but “Master” survived and claimed the top spot in the event.
Overall, Championship Sunday led to many emotional moments, as players fought to win their championship matches. Congrats again to your champions, Rocket League: Franklin Storm, Valorant: Smile Factory & Smash: “Master.” All competitors received the great opportunity to compete in front of multiple colleges, both in person and online to become seen to the world of collegiate esports scholarship opportunities.