Northwood Esports won the Rally Cry Counter-Strike 2 Collegiate Series this weekend.
“We had a rough start at the beginning of Rally Cry season, but things really started coming together as playoffs approached,” stated Max “SolGoat” Wallace, a player from Henrico, Virginia. “While we went into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed overall, we were confident we could win the entire tournament.”
Other players on Northwood’s Counter-Strike roster include Connor “TiCx” Hartman-Birge, of Toano, Virginia; Liam “xCape” Redmond, of Warwick, New York; Michael “Ellis” Ellis, of Merritt, Florida; and Benjamin “Niise” Mauldin, of Aldie, Virginia.
The team defeated players from George Mason University during the grand finals to win the tournament, which is one of the two major collegiate Counter-Strike 2 tournaments.
“Counter-Strike is a game with little support in the greater collegiate esports space, but I’m glad that we’re able to give the team a space to compete and win,” stated Northwood Esports Coach Jacob Jacob.
Rally Cry is an organization that hosts collegiate esports tournaments and often acts as the “off-season” for many games. The Rally Cry Counter-Strike 2 Collegiate Series tournament is followed by the FACEIT Collegiate Counter-Strike 2 Championship (which Northwood Esports won last year).
“With Rally Cry essentially being the first half of the Collegiate Counter-Strike season, I’m excited to see what they can do as they go into the second half with the FACEIT Collegiate Counter-Strike league,” Jacob noted. “There will be the same competition, and the team will be defending their title.”
Esports is an umbrella for numerous competitive games, similar to a university’s athletics department serving as an umbrella for various traditional sports. So Counter-Strike 2 is to an esports program what football is to a conventional athletics program.
With multiple world and national championships and several players who have gone on to play professionally, Northwood Esports is a powerhouse in the world of collegiate esports. For more information, visit https://esports.northwood.edu/
