Esports 9/11/2025 8:35:00 AM

Blinn Valorant picks up win in fall debut, while Blinn Call of Duty comes up short

The Buccaneers continue their season with a Super Smash Bros matchup Thursday

Esports 9/11/2025 8:35:00 AM

Blinn Valorant picks up win in fall debut, while Blinn Call of Duty comes up short

The Buccaneers continue their season with a Super Smash Bros matchup Thursday

The Blinn College esports program continued its fall season Wednesday, with matchups in Valorant and Call of Duty.

The Buccaneer Valorant team took down Idaho State University 2-0 in a best-of-three National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) bout, while Blinn's Call of Duty team came up short in a 3-0 best-of-five loss to Dunwoody College of Technology

Blinn Valorant and Call of Duty both made their fall debuts Wednesday.

The Buccaneers' Valorant squad of Samuel Long, Hayden Rubino, Camdin Sims, Ilies Dolliazal, Brian Yan rolled to a win over Idaho State.

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.

"Going into the match, we had a lot of confidence and worked exhaustively on communication and teamplay leading up to today," said Blinn assistant coach and Valorant manager Patrick Daley. "We're always looking to play new maps and compositions, and we had a great idea of exactly what we wanted to execute. We prepared for several maps, so after Idaho banned one of the maps we prepared for, which forced us to make adjustments on the fly, the team adapted perfectly despite a strong rally from Idaho."

Daley said the Bucs had a choice of maps in the second round, and made some slight tweaks to their strategy before closing out the win with another strong performance.

In the other match of the night, Blinn Call of Duty fell to Dunwoody.

Jaden Navarro, Aariz Ali, Jordan Vo, and Karsyn Krchnak competed for Blinn

The matchup pitted the four Bucs against the Hawks, 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.

Blinn assistant coach and Call of Duty manager Ryan Lucich said his young team showed promise but will need to find some consistency moving forward.

"We started off the series too slow with low energy, and it kind of carried through the rest of the series," Lucich explained. "This is still a brand-new roster, so growing pains are expected early, and we have some clear areas to work on starting Thursday."

Blinn's Valorant team continues its season with a NACE bout against Minnesota State University-Mankato at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 17, while the Bucs will continue their NACE Call of Duty slate against Baldwin Wallace University at 6 p.m. on Sept. 17.

Blinn has competed in intercollegiate athletics since 1903 and captured 53 national championships since 1987.

Print Friendly Version

Players Mentioned

Aariz Ali: Freshman; Call of Duty

Ilies Dolliazal: Freshman; Valorant

Hayden Rubino: Freshman; Valorant

Jordan Vo: Sophomore; Call of Duty

Players Mentioned

Aariz Ali
: Freshman; Call of Duty

Ilies Dolliazal
: Freshman; Valorant

Hayden Rubino
: Freshman; Valorant

Jordan Vo
: Sophomore; Call of Duty