As a result of their win on March 16th against Daemen College, the SNHU League of Legends team earned the participating qualification of the East Coast Conference (ECC) Championship. This put their regular season record to 4-1.
The ECC Championship, hosted by the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), was held on March 30th. NYIT faced SNHU in the championship.
NYIT, who defeated SNHU in their previous match-up, went undefeated in their season.
“We will defeat them,” said Mike Chao, mid-lane player of the SNHU team.
Chao’s confidence in the team was evident as he praised their hard work, stating that their determination set them ahead.
John Stillman, the supporter of the team, put in extra work by researching NYIT’s statistics.
Stillman created a datasheet marking the time when an NYIT’s player arrived at certain positions on the map. Stillman also filed data pertaining to the frequency of champion selection from each season, including win rates, taking the champion banned list into account. From this, he generated the usable champion for SNHU selection against the possible NYIT champion selections.
After an honorable battle, SNHU lost to NYIT on March 30 with a final score of 3-1.
As a team, Chao stated he believed SNHU was capable of defeating NYIT. However, they could not fully concentrate on the game because they were distracted by the audience.
However, as the runner-up champions of ECC, SNHU still owned the qualification of participating in the 2019 College Championship Play-in.
The first place winners from the Play-in will visit California for the 2019 College Championship this summer. This month will be the watershed to determine if SNHU could step onto the stage of the nation.
