Fifty years after Viterbo University’s men’s basketball team played its first season, a new team has been added to the university’s athletics program, a varsity sport the members of that first basketball team would never have imagined.
On Tuesday, Viterbo Esports team members will take part in their first match, playing in an arena created from a large two-story tiered classroom on the fourth floor of Viterbo’s Murphy Center.
A room where Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration started giving large-group instruction in the early 1940s has been transformed into a state-of-the-art gaming center. The Esports arena boasts 10 gaming stations where Viterbo’s team members will compete with other schools in the Varsity Plus Division of the National Association of Collegiate Esports Starleague.
“Viterbo’s investment in Esports is honestly more than I expected. They really came out swinging,” said coach Sam Clark, who came on board as Viterbo coach in November after coaching the Western Technical College team.
“The equipment and venue is extremely well done and really well thought out,” added Alex Boardman, a junior biology major from DeSoto who captains the Overwatch team that will compete in the Viterbo Esports team’s first match.
Viterbo is on the leading edge of Wisconsin collegiate Esports, one of the few that has a full-time coach, noted Clark, a Reedsburg native who earned an associate degree in cybersecurity from Madison Area Technical College right out of high school.
When Clark came to Western Technical College to study digital media production, he was Esports club president, playing on the Overwatch and Valorant teams, taking on coaching duties after he graduated in 2022.
“After playing at Western, I realized I liked helping other people play. I discovered I had the patience I needed to give coaching a try,” Clark said. “I’m still a very competitive person, but I’ve decided I like coaching a little more than playing.”
The conference that Viterbo competes in offers the choice of a dozen games. This season, Viterbo has teams competing in Overwatch, Valorant, Call of Duty and Fortnite.
The Varsity Plus division is considered a developmental league, which is especially appropriate for the Overwatch team. While team captain Boardman is an old hand at the game, other members are relative rookies.
One nice thing about the NACE’s Varsity Plus division is it allows coaches to offer guidance during competitions. “Having the extra viewpoint in the heat of battle is so useful, plus coach Clark knows how to play Overwatch and Valorant so well,” said Mikey Voge, a junior accounting major from Chippewa Falls who captains the Valorant team.
As captain of the Overwatch team, Boardman is taking a laid-back approach at the start of the season. “We’re definitely a developing group,” he said. “We’re going in trying not to overthink things too much.”
Voge’s Valorant team, on the other hand, is composed of experienced players, including Boardman, and expectations are high.
“We want to do as well as we can,” Voge said. “We’d like to essentially steamroll the league.”
Voge has a full plate this semester, competing as a member of Viterbo’s bowling team in addition to the Esports team, which also includes two members competing in track and field and cross country.
While many members of the co-ed Esports team come from Viterbo’s computer science program, others, like Voge and Boardman, come from a variety of majors unrelated to gaming.
As Esports coach, Clark spends a lot of time ensuring that his players work on their reaction times and in-game strategy. With Overwatch and Valorant, which both have five-member teams, and the four-on-four Call of Duty game, communication between team members is vital. Learning to communicate under stressful situations and offering advice without being critical are life skills Clark hopes to impart to his players in his role as Esports coach.
Traditional varsity sports like basketball draw plenty of spectators, but Esports draw a surprisingly large audience on a global scale, Clark noted. The League of Legends championship tournament, for example, pulls in more views worldwide than the Super Bowl.
Viterbo’s Esports teams should be entertaining to watch, Clark said. The games will be livestreamed on Viterbo’s Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/viterboesports), with a producer switching between player views to offer an all-encompassing experience.
The regular season’s eight weeks of matches start Feb. 7, with the Overwatch team playing on Tuesdays, Valorant and Call of Duty teams in action on Wednesdays and Fortnite matches on Saturdays, with all starting at 6 p.m.
Practice sessions are held in the Esports arena starting at 6 p.m. weeknights, a time Clark chose to minimize disruption to nearby classes. Even if it’s only scrimmages, the players can get a bit noisy, he admitted. “There’s a lot of explosive energy,” Clark said.
After this season is over, Clark said he will be busy recruiting team members for next year, noting that the Esports program has a fall season as well that starts in October.
Besides guiding Viterbo’s varsity Esports team, Clark and some of his team members aim to help build a sense of community among gamers, both on campus and in the community at large.
