Jake “jakee” Anderson is an American “Controllers” Player for Cloud9 VALORANT. Previously, jakeeval played for the University of St. Thomas before announcing that he would be joining the Cloud9 roster in March 2023.
Jakee’s college VALORANT career
Jakee played for the University of St. Thomas in the inaugural College VALORANT season.
The UST squad achieved a 4-0 season record throughout the Fall season, taking down the likes of Texas State, ACU, and the University of Tulsa.
Alongside nate, wreqd, anthonyjomarq, seyq, and Xhowi, jakee and UST achieved top 8 in the first split.
Throughout the playoffs, Jakee achieved a 1.20 rating with an average combat score of 256.1, putting him at #16 of overall players in the South Region for ACS.
In College VALORANT winter, Jakee and the University of St. Thomas team came back with a vengeance – once again achieving a perfect group stage record.
Jakee and the team took down team after team in their top 8 bracket run – meeting with Blinn in the lower finals, where jakee put up a total of 87 kills across the 4 game series.
In the Grand Finals against OC Esports, jakee did not let his foot off the gas, putting up another 88 kills against the OC Eagles. UST took home the championship 3-1 over OC Esports.
Jakee ended the season ranked #3 in rating (1.35), and climbed to 8th in ACS (274.0). Additionally Jakee placed at #1 overall in kills, with a whopping 446 kills in total during the playoffs.
Jakee gets picked up by Cloud9
On March 27, 2023, Jakee made history as one of the first college VALORANT players to go on to play professionally.
Cloud9 announced their roster for VCT 2023, which included “new guy” Jakee.
In an interview with Nerd Street Gaming, Jakee shared the goals he had since starting to compete in VALORANT:
“When I first started competing two years ago, the first was obviously go pro. The second was playing internationally, and the third is win internationally. And those three goals are super, super important to me, and then the fourth is solidify myself as a star player.”
Throughout his first season with the team, Jakee and Cloud9 achieved 4th in the VCT Americas League, followed up by a 1st place win in the Ten VALORANT Global Invitational.
Jakee still plays for Cloud9, they recently finished 7th-9th in the VCT Americas Kickoff and will be participating in VCT Champions Tour: Americas Stage 1 in April 2024.
The collegiate to professional pipeline (and vice versa)
Since Jakee left college to play professionally, a variety of players have made the opposite journey, such as former professional players Jcstani and Ec1s pursuing their degrees at Maryville University.
Additionally, former professional Fortnite player, Morgausse, used Stay Plugged In to find his home at Cumberland University where he is pursuing his degree.
There are seemingly more and more opportunities for players to either seek out a professional level of play or even go back to school and pursue a degree.
For those looking to pursue a degree and continue competing in esports, Stay Plugged In is here to help. We are the #1 recruiting platform for college scholarships, providing opportunities for students to compete in front of a network of hundreds of college esports programs with the potential to earn scholarships.