On any given Tuesday or Thursday evening in the basement of Scripps Hall, 001, you’ll find multiple teams engaging in a new, fast-moving activity for Ohio University’s students. Competitive gaming has leveled up on the bricks of Athens: in this basement filled with fluorescent lighting, players, broadcast students and staff work together to bring about a competitive gaming scene to the community. OHIO’s gaming program is hitting its stride, the result of a decade’s work developing it. 

OHIO offers the largest competitive and casual online gaming program in the region, making it appealing for incoming students. Dr. Jeff Kuhn, director of the OHIO Esports program, sees the opportunity it presents. 

“It’s only been in the last decade or so that universities have taken into consideration that games are a shared cultural space,” Kuhn says. “[It’s] where people are spending their time. More and more, for students who come into the university, games are their space.” Accredited by the National Association of Collegiate Esports, OHIO’s varsity esports program operates four teams that participate in sanctioned games: League of Legends, Rocket League, Overwatch and VALORANT.  Riot Games, the online gaming company that developed League of Legends and VALORANT, also helps to maintain complex professional esports competitions for both titles, positioning their products among the most stable games in the esports industry. 

OHIO has invested in the success of its students’ passion for gaming, with a high-tech esports arena in Scripps Hall. This is where OHIO’s varsity esports team calls home, using approximately 30 gaming PCs, each with its own accessories, such as keyboards and monitors. Complete with high-performance hardware, each setup costs over $1,000. OUCU Financial, OHIO’s esports sponsor promoted throughout the university’s arena and on its broadcasts, helps pay the costs. 

The OHIO esports program, along with its extracurricular activities, offers academic options for students hoping to enter the industry. Although not everyone who wants to break into the industry can be behind the monitor, Riot Games’ professional circuit, through the VALORANT Champions Tour, offers various positions across 36 teams. 

“They’re looking for nutritionists, physical therapists, trainers, marketing people,” Kuhn says.  

The circuit also offers positions unaffiliated with teams, such as event planners and media managers. That, Kuhn says, is where OHIO hopes to deliver students into the market through its esports certificates. 

OHIO’s esports broadcast team recently won an award of its own: the Scripps College of Communication’s “Learn Pillar Award,” commending its “distinctive excellence” in advancing the college’s professional legacy.  

Coach Cameron “Astrid” Thompson gives her team a new strategy before the second game in a best of three against the Cardinals. | Photo by Liam Syrvalin

Kam “Astrid” Thompson, Cameron Thompson, coach of the varsity VALORANT team, said she originally met members of the organization by “asking what their rank was,” – a reference to the in-game ladder that categorizes players by their skill and performance over an average of online games.  

“Last season I got really close with the VALORANT Varsity team,” Thompson says, “I joked that I would be their coach, and I never really meant it. But now, here I am.” 

Thompson highlighted that getting together, making friends and having fun is the true goal of any match night. 

“I think having a place to come and hang out with your friends and getting to be close with the people you’re on the team with, that’s my favorite part,” she says.