Esports 10/9/2025 1:26:00 PM

Blinn eports falls to Fanshawe, UT-Arlington in Call of Duty, Valorant play

The Buccaneers will compete in Valorant and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate matches Thursday

Esports 10/9/2025 1:26:00 PM

Blinn eports falls to Fanshawe, UT-Arlington in Call of Duty, Valorant play

The Buccaneers will compete in Valorant and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate matches Thursday

The Blinn College esports program came up short in Call of Duty and Valorant play Wednesday.

Blinn's Call of Duty team dropped a National Association of College Esports (NACE) tilt to Fanshawe College, while the Buccaneers' Valorant squad fell to the University of Texas at Arlington in a NACE matchup.

The quartet of Jaden Navarro, Aariz Ali, Karsyn Krchnak, and Jordan Vo competed for Blinn in a 3-2, best-of-five Call of Duty series against Fanshawe. The Bucs dropped to 4-2 in the NACE East 1 Conference.

The matchup pitted the four Bucs against the Falcons, with each team attempting to collect three wins across three modes of play in the first-person-shooter game:

Hardpoint: Teams secure rotating capture points, earning points for control. A team wins by reaching 250 points first.
Search and Destroy: Teams alternate attacking and defending, with the goal to plant or defuse an objective. The first team to win 6 rounds claims victory.
Control: Teams attack and defend two capture points, with limited lives adding an elimination aspect. The first team to win three rounds claims victory.
Fanshawe took the opening Skyline map (Hardpoint) with a 250-173 decision before Blinn bounced back to win Search and Destroy 6-5 in round two. In control, the Falcons prevailed with a 3-1 victory. In round four, the Bucs rebounded in a second turn at Hardpoint and defeated Fanshawe 250-138. Ultimately, however, the Falcons would secure the series victory with a 6-3 triumph in Search and Destroy.

"While we're upset about the match result, I think we learned a lot throughout this series," Blinn assistant coach and Call of Duty coach Ryan Lucich said. "I'm glad we had the experience of playing a five-round series before we head into the playoffs. I truly think we can take what we learned today and use it to propel ourselves into top form for the remainder of the semester."

Blinn Call of Duty continues its season with an NJCAA Esports match against Alvin Community College at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 14.

The Bucs' Valorant team of Ilies Dolliazal, Milad Khorsandi, Hayden Rubino, Samuel Long, and Brian Yang were also in action Wednesday, but fell to UT-Arlington 2-1 in a best-of-three series.

Valorant is a tactical, team-based, first-person shooter set in a near-future world. Teams of five players choose unique agents with distinct abilities, combining shooting skills with strategic use of each agent's toolkit. Teams alternate between attacking and defending. Attackers aim to plant a spike at one of the designated sites, while defenders try to prevent this or defuse the spike if planted. The first team to win 13 rounds claims victory. If both teams reach a tie at 12-12, overtime is triggered, and the match continues until one team wins by two rounds, with teams alternating between attacking and defending in each overtime round.

UT-Arlington earned a 13-4 victory before Blinn answered with a 13-5 victory in round two.

Bucs assistant coach and Valorant coach Patrick Daley praised Yang for an exceptional performance in the second round, which included impressive shot-calling and the program's first Ace (when a player eliminates all five members of the opposing team in a single round).

THe final round proved to be a nail-biter as UT-Arlington narrowly escaped with a 13-11 victory.

"This was one of the closest and most hard-fought matches we've had all year," Daley said. "Despite the result, the team showed tremendous growth and composure, playing at a higher level than ever before. The players left feeling proud of their progress and ready to bring that same form into our upcoming matches."

The Bucs get back to work with a Valorant bout against NJCAAe foe Northeast Iowa Community College at 7 p.m. on Thursday.

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