NC State Esports hits the big time at Duke’s Mayo Classic

The Duke’s Mayo Classic football game, which pitted NC State versus #11 Tennessee on September 7, went very poorly for the Wolfpack, which lost 51-10. But it went a lot better for NC State’s Ethan Jamroz, a second-year Aerospace Engineering student, who earned the right to compete in the EA Sports College Football activation at the game’s FanFest.

Before the weekend of the game, Jamroz triumphed in a campus-wide EA College Football 25 tournament hosted by the NC State Esports Program. Students competed in the NC State Gaming and Esports Lab at the Libraries or online, with the winner getting to head to Charlotte to represent NC State and play a showmatch against the top student from the University of Tennessee in the Hyper X Esports truck outside Bank of America Stadium. 

“It was a really cool experience at the game,” Jamroz says. “The competition paid for my hotel, gas, and food, and treated us like professional esports contestants. The day of, we were on the stage all day interacting with people and the great crew that Rally Cry had there. We were in the middle of the FanFest, so it was a good time seeing all the fans around and cheering.”

Livestreamed on the ACC Network, Jamroz played alongside NC State football alumni and Tuffy, the university’s mascot. Unfortunately, he met the same fate onscreen that the football team did on the grass field.

“It was a really awesome experience to represent NC State, especially because it was one of our school’s first esports competitions,” Jamroz says. “It was of course unfortunate that I couldn’t get us the win against Tennessee in the game—I would have liked to in front of all those viewers. It was actually quite the surprise that I was competing, due to the fact that I had never played the game at all before a week prior to the competition. I gave it my best shot with my short training period, and I made sure to have a fun time out there.”

Some of Jamroz’s favorite games are FIFA, F123, and CoD MW2. He looks forward to future esports possibilities at NC State.

“It was incredible to watch Ethan represent NC State at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte in front of 10,000 viewers on Twitch and in-person at the game,” says Cody Elsen, Esports Program Director at the Libraries. “He did a great job representing the Esports Program.”

This post was originally published in University Libraries.