Summer 2019 Recap!

Hello Sooner Nation! It’s been a minute since we’ve updated everyone on our status, what we’re doing, and what we’ve done. So let’s get caught up with reviewing our summer intercession before the new year formally begins next week.

Let’s start with the organizational pulse at the end of the year. These number represent our activity from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019.

On May 4th, 2019, I streamed with 3 of my closest peers on this esports development journey in higher education. They are:

• Dylan Wray from The University of North Texas in Denton, TX
• Eugene Friar from Texas Wesleyan in Forth Worth, TX
• Greg Adler from The University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson, TX

These gentlemen have become integral to my sanity as well as a soundboard to ping ideas off of while pushing and supporting each other to do more. Each of these programs I consider to be flagships for their own specific reasons as we all face different challenges while share similar frustrations. If you’d like to watch our recorded live broadcast take a look! Needless to say, I love my region!

In Early 2019, out of Union Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an announcement came that there was going to be the first official K-12 (Focusing 9-12) esports league across the state of Oklahoma. I promptly reached out to Mr. Borland who is responsible for this amazing opportunity. He has been running a gaming program out of Union for years and stepped up to scale up the opportunity for the entire Sooner state.

On May 18th, 2019, the OeSL held their first exhibition event hosting matches predominately focused between Sapulpa and Union public schools and invited the entire state out to participate and witness the kickoff of this new league. Schools from across the state showed up during an inclement weather day to see, meet, and discuss this new opportunity.

I asked Mr. Borland if they were going to stream their LoL exhibition match and offered our services out of Shoutcasting department utilizing the expertise of our now alumni founder Alex Tu and a current student member Noah Hassoun. Afterwards, one of our LoL coaches/players Darren Nguyen interviewed the MVP of the winning team and I interviewed Mr. Borland. 18 schools signed on for their first year which kicks off in September 2019! That’s insane!

Watch the exhibition match and the after match interviews. The beauty of technology in 2019 allowed us to announce the game from my home studio in Moore with Alex and Noah, while Darren and I interviewed in person in Tulsa. This is the power of our developments as we continue to advocate for equal energy in developments aside from intercollegiate competition. (Interviews are excluded from video due to age restriction)

Thanks to AVGL, we were invited to attend and compete in two exhibition matches in Apex Legends and Rocket League. Dreamhack Dallas was a three day event facilitated at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, TX on May 31, 2019 through June 2, 2019. This event was comprised of competitions, vendors, a massive bring your own computer event, networking, and a concert from Seven Lions.

AVGL is a collegiate focused tournament organizer who we’ve become more and more fond of this last year thanks to their deeper attention to detail and streamlining workflows. We appreciate them making this opportunity happen as we faced off against our peers and rivals from UNT in Apex Legends and UT – San Antonio for Rocket League. Huge shoutout to AVGL’s Andrew Garcia for ensuring everything went smoothly for us as well as requested feedback and listening. We had a great time!

Part of our developments also include event coverage and journalistic practicum. So like our shotcasters above at OeSL, one of our creative production team members under our Media & News department that represent the core energy of the sooneresports.org website you’re viewing right now. Zach Satz, a student who we met 6 months before he even came to OU, got a press pass and documented Dreamhack for us. Below are some of his event coverage photos as well as recap video completely done by Zach himself. Lastly, Zach did a voice interview with the one and only Justin Varghese, who is the North American Marketing Manager for Dreamhack AB. Take a look at the energy from Dreamhack across all this media!

For the most of summer 2019 the OU Esports Club student leadership pulled in 3 recent graduates and came together to evolve a 4 page student organization constitution from when we started in in 2017 and grow it into an 100+ page operations manual in anticipation of potentially soon to come development upgrades. There were several reason this was our primary focus for the summer. We learned some tough lessons last year as we dove in hard and crashed and burned on several fronts. So not only to reduce future mishaps we wanted to align ourselves with our strategic development roadmap as well. The amazing thing is this document was 85% driven by students for the most part had minimal high conflict debates. As an advisor and mentor on this journey, I was extremely proud to find that not only did these students execute they did so pulling on the experiences we’ve learned from the opportunities we created from the ground up. A proud moment for this team, organization, and relatively large undertaking.

We’re literally 1 big step away from very dramatic change in how we are viewed, operate, and execute what we’ve done since day one. From the over 20 schools I’ve had initial conversations with this last school year, to the over 50 high school students looking to find their higher education home, we’re set to continue to push the envelope alongside so many other amazing programs in the US. At this time if you are a student at any of the OU campuses sign up to be a part of the community. Every single one of the 6 departments is now seeking new personnel with tryouts right around the corner!

One final piece of media for you all. In the Spring, 3 of our media students (Jack, Zach, and Stingray TY!) created this documentary for us as a means to showcase who we are/were. Take a look below! This will be updated and put right on the front page shortly along with a new media portal and updated information on all pages.

Thank you all for being supporters and fans of the OU Esports Club, the next major community and development to come to The Sooner Nation.