A sport is defined as “physical activity engaged in for pleasure.”
Despite this, there is a new sport that has become more and more popular that pushes the boundaries of this definition. E-sports is that sport and it has picked up steam in communities everywhere.
Aidan Fort, a student at BYU in the Sports Journalism program, saw the lack of an E-sports atmosphere on the BYU campus and had an idea for his senior capstone project. The Capstone Cup.
“I love video games and e-sports, it is something I have always done. BYU isn’t necessarily known for e-sports and it is hard to host a sporting event but I have the connections and the ability to do an E-sports tournament,” Fort said.
Fort and his team decided to put together an all-day Smash tournament on Nov. 16. It began around 10 a.m. and the grand finale wasn’t played until 5 p.m. The day was filled with seeding play to determine the best player and then a winner and a loser brackets followed that. After a long day of playing the gamer tag Temporary Plan was able to win the tournament as he beat Gravity Slam 3-1 in a best of five.
“I just had to stay patient which is mentally draining after a long day of play,” Temporary Plan said.
Temporary Plan is one of the highest-rated players in Utah as he bounces between rankings within the top 5. This showed throughout as he only lost one game throughout the tournament and it was in the finale.
Watching the tournament play out it was very impressive the work that these players had put into their skills. No matter who was playing there were always difficult combos and moves that didn’t just happen by accident.
On top of the players, there was a whole atmosphere of e-sports that Fort managed to bring. He brought in announcers to commentate the games, had graphics for the Capstone Cup, a main TV coupled with many other monitors to get through games and a stream of the whole thing.
“I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was super fun commentating,” Jakson Vermillion said.
Vermillion was one of four commentators who was rotating through the lineup throughout the day. This was a unique experience for many of them with it being the first time they had commentated.
“It’s [growing e-sports] really cool, it is nice seeing the community being built up right now and hopefully at least there could be some sort of intramural team built up from that,” he said.
The students who made this happen and participated in it have put a lot of time into E-sports and hope that it can become something BYU recognizes.
“I hope that events like this and students' interest can hopefully bring it into the limelight for BYU so they can compete with the other colleges in Utah that all have programs for it.”
Fort hopes to be able to make changes in the culture surrounding the e-sports he loves and help it to become something people can do with the Cougars' name on their chest.