Northern Essex Community College currently has only one sport still continuing games and that is esports. With the situation at hand canceling a lot of sports this semester, esports is able to continue playing due to the fact they won’t have to be in-person to play. Some of their games were canceled when the campus was closed, but some of them were still able to be played. 

Coach David Arivella has been able to help the esports athletes during this time by keeping some of the games going. “Our Overwatch team was unable to continue playing as some of our players required the equipment on campus so the Overwatch team was forced to drop out. So, players who cannot play from home were unfortunately unable to continue competing,” Arivella said. The esports team was able to continue with its Smash Brothers Ultimate and Rocket League games though.

The difficulty of streaming Smash Brothers Ultimate has been hard for the team considering they don’t have the proper equipment to be able to stream the games. “Unfortunately, we do not have a capture card for streaming Smash Bros which makes it hard for anyone to follow. Matches are played but no one actually gets to watch them,” Arivella said. “We will hopefully be getting a capture card for next semester which should allow a Smash player to stream.” The esports team is looking to acquire a capture card that would upload the games to a screen and then the team would be able to stream it for the audience.

The esports Rocket League team recently won the championship on April 29. For anyone interested in following the esports team you can see how their tournament system is set up at https://njcaae.leaguespot.gg/league and if you want to see the overall standings for the esports team you can check that out at https://www.neccknights.com/sports/esports/2019-20/schedule.