Esports 9/22/2025 10:55:00 PM

Blinn earns League of Legends victory, drops Overwatch tilt

The Buccaneers picked up their first League of Legends win with a shutout of Bergen

Esports 9/22/2025 10:55:00 PM

Blinn earns League of Legends victory, drops Overwatch tilt

The Buccaneers picked up their first League of Legends win with a shutout of Bergen

The Blinn College esports program split two matches Monday.

The Buccaneers' League of Legends team opened NJCAA Esports (NJCAAe) play with a victory over Bergen Community College, while their Overwatch team dropped a National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) match to Texas A&M University-San Antonio.

Blinn's League of Legends squad of Aiden House, Braxton Jones, Chandler Collins, Juan Diego Castro Venegas, and Odili Oheri picked up their first win of the season with a 2-0 best-of-three win over Bergen.

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) where teams of five players draft champions with unique abilities to work together to gain control over a map. The game's objective is to destroy the enemy Nexus while securing objectives like turrets, inhibitors, and neutral monsters. Teams must control a map and destroy a Nexus while contesting neutral objectives such as Dragons and Baron Nashor for powerful boosts.

"We have a young team with just one returning player from last year, so it felt great to open the season with a decisive win," Blinn assistant coach and League of Legends coach Ryan Lucich said.

Jones, a sophomore, dominated play for the Bucs and helped pave the way to victory. In the opening round, Jones finished with 28 of Blinn's 34 eliminations to go with 70,000 damage dealt, five times greater than the rest of the players in the matchup.

In round two, the Bucs used timely team-fighting tools to help Braxton put the finishing touches on the victory.

"Much like round one, Braxton led the team to the win through his skill and leadership," Lucich added. "Our new players did a great job of listening and providing the engagement tools that allowed Braxton to carry. We will look to use this momentum into our next match in two weeks."

Blinn League of Legends gets back to work with an NJCAAe tilt against Pratt Community College at 6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 6.

Blinn's night continued with an Overwatch matchup against TAMU-San Antonio, and came up short in a 3-0 best-of-five decision.

The team of Joseph Mares, Donnivan Straight, Donovan Hernandez, Trey Vaughan and Jose Rios.

Blinn is now 0-2 in the NACE West Central Conference.

Overwatch is a team-based, first-person-shooter in which players select heroes with unique abilities and work together to complete objectives across multiple map modes. Each team can strategically choose its maps based on team strengths and opponent weaknesses.

Each round Monday included a different win condition based on the following modes:

Control: Teams fight to capture and hold a single point. The first team to reach 100% control wins two rounds in a best-of-three format, where the loser of each round picks the next map.
Escort: The attacking team moves a payload to its destination while defenders try to stop them. The payload moves when attackers are near it, and the attackers aim to complete the route before time runs out.
Hybrid: Teams capture a point and then escort a payload. The match is typically one round for attackers, who must secure the point first before moving the payload.
Push: Teams battle to control a robot and push it toward the opponent's side. The first team to push it farther than their opponents wins, with the loser picking the next map.
Clash: Teams capture consecutive points, with the first team to reach a set number of points winning.

Monday's match was contested in the Control, Hybrid, and Push modes.

The Bucs played the Jaguars tight from start to finish. In the Control round (Lijiang Tower map), TAMU-San Antonio earned a 2-0 win. Then in the Hybrid round (King's Row), Blinn fought hard before falling 3-1. The Jaguars then outlasted the Bucs 1-0 in the Push round (New Queen Street).

"While we lost tonight, our performance marked an important step forward compared to our first outing," Bucs head coach and Overwatch coach Kyle Murto said. "There's still a lot of work to do, but progress is happening. We will be back in the film room tomorrow to go over what went wrong and fix these issues before our first NJCAAe match Wednesday.

With continued growth and dedication, I am confident this team will keep improving week by week."

Blinn Overwatch continues its season when it opens NJCAAe play against Western Iowa Tech Community College at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

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

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