With the city of Chattanooga on their chests in UTC’s blue and gold, the UTC Esports teams push to make themselves known in the collegiate Esports scene. From humble beginnings as a student-run club, the Esports teams now have a league of their own backed by the university that enables them to showcase that video games can be more than a distraction from studies.
Chase Daffron, the Esports Coordinator, started out as a member of the Esports club playing for one of the Call of Duty (CoD) teams as an undergraduate. Due to his activeness as a club member, he landed his current position in the program. He continues to play for the CoD team, not letting his position hold him back from doing what he enjoys.
Through the efforts of the students who dedicated their time to the club, UTC’s Esports organization has grown in the past two years, now recognized as part of the university’s IT program.
According to Daffron, the club gained funding through student interest and engagement, and their teams ranked nationally in various games. The program currently has over 4,500 people in it.
“They [the university] were like, “Okay, let’s give more attention to it and actually give it the funding it needs,” said Daffron.
The Esports program is strictly competitive, and players who compete typically have to meet qualifications before they can play in tournaments. Each game has different requirements, usually relating to skill, such as one’s rank and average scoring among players.
Tryouts are required to join teams and are typically held at the beginning of each semester. Current and prospective students fill out a survey that asks basic questions about rank, skill level, and role in specific games and grades. Between the survey, trying out, and the individual’s sportsmanship, the best individuals are chosen to make up the teams; the majority of their games will have two teams—A and B.
“We like to hold our people to a professional standard. They know what brand they’re representing when they put on their jersey, when they go live on Twitch, and with their personal brands they know they’re not just representing themselves, but the university too,” said Daffron.
The program does not discriminate between platforms. Both console and PC players are welcome to join. Even though all the games are played on PC, for controller-only games like Rocket League and CoD and Smash Bros on the Nintendo Switch, hook-ups are used to play.
The stereotype of women not being gamers is nonexistent in the Esports program, as the male-to-female ratio is fairly 50-to-50. Furthermore, Overwatch team A has two women who compete with the guys.
“That’s the one thing I like about Esports too; it’s not one gender focus. It’s kinda both, anyone can play,” said Daffron.
Additional titles they compete in are Valorant and League of Legends. All of the teams compete in tournaments year-round, though spring is their busiest season.
”Basically, from January to May, it’s go, go, go all the time,” said Daffron.
The teams compete in most collegiate tournaments depending on what games there are. These tournaments are either online or in-person at LANs, events where the competitors are together in one place connected to the same local area network.
Some of the biggest tournaments they compete in are the College CoD League, Playfly Esports, and Southern Esports League (SEL). The majority of these tournaments also have prize pools that can range from trophies to prize money.
“The players keep 100% of the winnings, the program doesn’t take any of the winnings from the players,” said Daffron.
Success permeates across all the teams, with many placing and even winning some of their tournaments. In November 2024 at the Knox Esports tournament, the Valorant team secured first place and the Overwatch team placed second.
“This year alone, our Call of Duty team went up to Concord University and placed 3rd at the ECAC LAN hosted by Concord University,” said Daffron.
The teams bounce off each other’s energies and push one another to work harder and improve, so when one team wins, everyone feels encouraged to shoot for the stars.
“Last year, the CoD team winning the Southern Miss LAN really highlighted the beginning of our program—bringing home gold,” said Daffron. “That really motivated a lot of the other teams to start practicing.”
The program has a lot in store for the future of its players and what they can offer to the Esports scene. Some short-term goals include adding more game titles to their program and more PCs to the twelve fully kitted-out at the Esports Complex. They hope to expand their League of Legends team and add Counter-Strike and Rainbow 6 Siege teams to their roster.
For its future, the program hopes to host a tournament at the university, but that’s not the end goal. Daffron wants to take their team even further.
“Becoming one of the biggest collegiate Esports programs in the southeast is our biggest goal,” said Daffron.
Even though competing is the main part of tournaments, Daffron expressed that spreading the joy of Esports and building connections with people in the gaming community is an advantage of being in the league as well.
“We meet a lot of different people from colleges, whether it be people from across the globe, even in different countries,” said Daffron.
With the motivation and dedication of the team players, students in the program, and the efforts of Daffron, the UTC Esports program continues to pursue its goal of being the greatest in the league.
“Look out for UTC Esports, it’s definitely going to be on the map after this year; it’ll be one of the staples here at UTC for sure,” said Daffron.
