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Esports

Esports is a growing industry at every level ― locally, nationally, and globally. Participating in its cultivation is both a personal and professional passion. Over the past few years, I have been involved in the George Mason University and Northern Virginia esports community as a leader and organizer, gaining new skills and applying expertise along the way.

I am most familiar with the competitive esports scenes of League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Super Smash Bros., Rivals of Aether, and Overwatch.

Presented here are some of my significant achievements, positions, and events in the local esports scene.

Independent Tournament Organizer and Volunteer


Date: 2022 - present

Events:

Over the past year, I have begun participating as a TO and volunteer in local MDVA events.

Most recently I have started up a new monthly tournament series, Smash & Co., as co-head TO. Featuring brackets for Project+, Rivals of Aether, and Ultimate. Smash & Co. aims to highlight smaller games with a passionate playerbase to the larger Smash Ultimate community. The first Smash & Co. was a success, maxing out entry cap for each bracket and seeing 40% of Ultimate Singles entrants participate in at least one other game.




GMU Esports Tournament Organizer


Org: GMU Esports
Date: August 2021 - present

Responsibilities:

Events:

After stepping away from my role as President, I wanted to remain involved with GMU Esports as we returned to in-person events. I decided to become a Tournament Organizer and help run Bring More Setups (BMS), GMU Esports’ weekly Smash tournament. In addition to helping with the Smash Ultimate Bracket, I run a Rivals of Aether side bracket.

Over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, we held additional larger tournaments such as BMS 100: HD Remix. Featuring brackets for Melee, Smash 4, Project+, and Ultimate, HD Remix was a celebration of BMS reaching 100 weekly events across 5 years and 4 Smash games.




GMU Esports President


Org: GMU Esports
Date: January 2020 - May 2021

Responsibilities:

Elected as President of the GMU Esports club in late 2019, I began leading the initiative to transition the organization from a club into an official school program in early 2020. After assembling a group of the club’s more senior staff and players, we set about compiling and authoring a 17-page proposal for a potential GMU Esports program within the Student Involvement department at GMU. The full text of the proposal can be found here.

The finished proposal was presented to Lauren Long, the director of Student Involvement. After further discussions, in June 2020, GMU Esports became part of the department, receiving resources and backing from the university.

I continued in my position as President through the program’s first year. Over the spring and summer of 2020, I collaborated with Lauren and members of the proposal group to create the new program infrastructure. During this time we revamped the Discord server(s), restructured student staff, brought on new members, created transition procedures, set out program goals and missions, and more.

While my year as President of the new program took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, I took advantage of our inability to hold in-person events and prioritized making sure we would be ready when they returned. As such, we focused on ironing out our new staff workflow and content pipeline and set about acquiring resources for our teams and events. Much of what we acquired was for the new GMU Esports team practice room, located in The Hub on GMU's Fairfax campus. Team members would have access to gaming PCs to scrim and play matches on. Streaming equipment and Nintendo Switch consoles would be available for our staff teams to run and broadcast events.




Member of GAMEmason Planning Committee


Org: GMU Student Involvement
Date: January 2019 - present

Responsibilities:

Events:

In late 2018, Student Involvement at GMU set out to create GAMEmason, an annual on-campus convention that would engage students by providing events related to various fields in gaming. A variety of events were held, including workshops, celebrity speakers, and tournaments, with topics ranging from esports to game development, and everything in between.

VCOI (Virginia Collegiate Overwatch Invitational) was created as an in-state Overwatch tournament between Virginia colleges and universities. The initial rounds of the tournament would be played online, culminating in a third place match and grand finals match that would be played on-stage at the Center for the Arts as part of the GAMEmason event lineup. I was responsible for organizing the tournament itself, which involved reaching out to other Virginia schools, securing casters and talent, scheduling and administering games, and more. Within the GAMEmason planning committee, I often was working with the Center of the Arts personnel to make sure the finals could happen day-of.

The first GAMEmason took place on April 5th, 2019, and surpassed attendance expectations by over double the amount of attendees, making the event a resounding success and putting a spotlight on GMU Esports. I have continued to participate on the GAMEmason planning committee over the past few years and returned as the main tournament organizer for OVCI (Overwatch Virginia Community Invitational, formerly VCOI) in 2020 and 2021. Beginning in 2022, I have moved away from directly TOing OVCI, but still hold an active role in the preparation of GAMEmason and GMU Esports’ tournaments.

GAMEmason 2020 was planned to be in-person, with the OVCI finals making a return and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate expanding to a full tournament. However, as the world shut down due to COVID, the event was canceled and only GMU Esports' tournaments were continued in an online format. In 2021, GAMEmason returned in a completely online format, with the Smash Ultimate tournament being replaced by Super Smash Bros. Melee for one year only, and OVCI happening in full force.

In 2022, GAMEmason returned offline. I lead the organizing of the featured Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament, BMS @ GAMEmason 2022. Other aspects of the event, such as the OVCI Finals, celebrity guests, live music, and more, returned.




Overwatch Team Media Manager


Org: GMU Esports
Date: September 2018 - January 2020

Responsibilities:

My main responsibility as Media Manager for GMU Esports' Overwatch team was to plan the team’s online presence across various social media platforms, mainly focusing on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

This included utilizing my skills as a graphic designer to create visual content with consistent branding across platforms in order to instill team familiarity with online audiences. I also designed and created the branding and visual graphics for the Virginia Community Overwatch Invitational (VCOI), an in-state tournament between VA colleges and universities hosted by GMU Esports. Additionally, I helped curate, and in some cases create, short-form and long-form video content with our team editors, including gameplay montages, interviews, and memes. Examples of my work on social media can be found below.

Another responsibility I had was to network between the team and outside organizations, schools, and individuals. I helped GMU Esports partner and participate in events with Washington Vice & Virtue, Washington Justice, and other sponsors.