Who says playing video games can’t be rewarding? Just ask the “Heroes of the Dorm” team at the University of Texas at Arlington.
All members of the UTA Esports Club won free tuition for the rest of their collegiate years recently when the team won the Heroes of the Dorm National Championship.
The team swept the popular gaming competition with a 29-0 record over the course of the three-week event run in a bracket format similar to the NCAA basketball tournament. It featured 64 schools from across the nation and Canada, UTA said in a release.
UT Arlington’s team includes students Eugene Tseng, a senior finance major; Richard Tran, a senior business information systems major; Toby Park, a freshman computer science major; Kevin Park, a senior biology major; Yusuf Sunka, a junior political science major; and Tony Lam, a sophomore finance major.
“Congratulations to the 2017 Heroes of the Dorm, UT Arlington, for an awesome run through this year’s tournament.”
Mike Morhaime
Competitors played Blizzard Entertainment’s Heroes of the Storm, a multiplayer online battle arena video game, the university said. In the finals, UTA topped Louisiana State University in Las Vegas.
“Congratulations to the 2017 Heroes of the Dorm, UT Arlington, for an awesome run through this year’s tournament,” Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment said in a release. “The teams competing represent the future of competitive gaming, and it’s been a thrill seeing them in action.”
Last year, the UTA team finished second in the competition.
“Going into this tournament, we knew it was our last chance to win before two of our key members graduated,” Eugene Tseng said. “We wanted to take it all this time, so as soon as the tournament was announced we formed our team and began to spend hours and hours practicing to ensure our victory.”
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