Concordia comes short in esports season opener
Concordia Rocket League team suffers reverse series sweep to York
Concordia’s Rocket League Esports team kicked off its season Monday night, falling 3-2 to York University.
Rocket League is a free-to-play video-game where user-controlled RC cars zoom around a domed arena, driving and jumping into a large ball, trying to score on the opposing team’s net. The cacophony and chaos of the game results in non-stop action and often impressive, sometimes hilarious action.
Matches between competing schools are formatted as a best-of-five series, with three players on each side.
James Kierans (Littlemac) led the way for Concordia, scoring six goals over five games. Spencer McCool (McCool) contributed three goals and Pierre-Luc Rioux-Ranger (Beaver Le Frenchman) added two.
Kierans broke the deadlock in game one, scoring a goal with 11 seconds left on the clock. He followed it up with the only goal in game two to give Concordia a 2-0 series lead.
“The first two games were pretty close, with only one goal differential,” Rioux-Ranger said. “We felt like they were a good team, but a beatable one for us.”
The tide of the series turned when York came out with a dominant performance in game three, winning 4-1. York scored with less than a second left in game four to even the series and take it to a deciding game five.
“We started to play more scared and mistakes piled up really quickly,” said Rioux-Ranger. “The last second goal in game four was the dagger for us, and we couldn’t recover.”
The fifth and final game was a tight affair, with the game tied 2-2 until York scored with 38 seconds left to take the lead and win the game, completing the comeback and reverse sweep of the series.
Concordia’s Rocket League team will look to bounce back on Oct. 19 against Conestoga College in Ontario Post-Secondary Esports play.
