Poet eSports is an electronic sports club that I ran at Whittier College. Towards the end of the year my Sophomore year of college, I was approached by a group project member about running a social media account for his esports club. I said yes thinking it would be an easy job and would look good on my resume. I quickly found myself as co-head of the club. I worked closely with James Behenna, the clubs founder, on planning events and tournaments and recruiting members for the club. My primary work for the club revolved around technology. For instance whenever we held a tournament, I was in charge of setting up the game systems, making sure there was sound for everything, if we were streaming, making sure that there was a clean output with out echoes, and figuring out what equipment we needed for the event. Some of the other projects I worked on for the club include creating the clubs website, poetesports.whittier.domains, as well as animating the clubs logo.
As I entered my senior year, the ownership of the club was passed down from James to me. This was extremely honoring to me. With that being said, I set my goals high for the club. After seeing what the club was capable of during the year prior, including 3 months of virtual work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I knew I was in for a challenge but still set the bar extremely high. I am very happy to say we were able to accomplish all the goals set.
About one month into the fall semester, I was approached by Timothy Anderson, the schools Vice President of Innovation and New Ventures to discuss expanding the eSports club. Mr. Anderson generously donated 2 computers to the club for us to use for tournaments. They were loaned out to two of our club’s officers to use for school and practicing competitive eSports. Eventually Mr. Anderson pitched the potential of the eSports club to the schools president, Linda Oubré, and the board of trustees. One of the board members saw the potential growth in the club and generously donated $20,000 to be used for expanding and building the eSports club competition and training room. Over the course of the Spring semester, I spent several weekends on campus cleaning and putting together the competition room, including building computers capable of running the most popular eSports games. At the end of my time at Whittier, I am happy to say that I was able to set the eSports club on a path towards becoming a competitive club, competing in country wide tournaments against some of the best schools in the country.