Kodiaks welcome addition of college ESports team

By Ry Clarke - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on August 18, 2022.

Submitted photo Justin Garrick and Allyson Cikor will lead the Lethbridge College's Kodiaks Esports team, officially slated for the upcoming 2022-23 academic year.

Lethbridge College is officially adding the ESports team into Kodiaks Athletics with its first full season slated for the 2022-23 academic year.

Founded back in the winter semester of 2022 the team of 15 entered the Canadian Collegiate ESports League playing exhibition games in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference. Now the team will have the official backing of the Kodiaks Athletics with Justin Garrick, a recent College graduate in the New Media Program, as the coach.

“It’s something that I wish happened when I first graduated high school, like years and years ago. If the college had the ESports program back then, I would have jumped straight into college right after high school and competed at my peak gaming levels,” said Garrick, hoping to inspire others to reach their potential, and noting ESports has its own challenges and isn’t just about gamer stereotypes.

The team will compete in Valorant, League of Legends, Rocket League, and Super Smash Bros. with a goal to expand more into the CCEL.

“I would really like to have as many games as possible. Ideally, every game that’s in the CCEL, to have all those games imported to the college and then find out what turnout we can get from each one, and if possible, have all of them. There’s still talks and plans to have games part of intramurals and have them integrated into the ESports in the future,” said Garrick, looking to expand the player base and grow on this major step.

Allyson Cikor, who served as a coach during the inaugural season, will return to the team as program coordinator. She works on league and tournament registration and ensuring the ESports team is well equipped with the best software.

“It’s been a lot of work. Last year, we were actually operating out of a computer lab that wasn’t being used, so we used it as our ESports lab. But this year, we actually got 13 Alienware stations. So we have a whole lab that’s decked out with high-end gaming PCs. The lab is dedicated to ESports and is going to be used for intramurals and varsity. It comes with a whole suite of fancy keyboards, mice, headsets, chairs, the whole shebang,” said Cikor, noting the growth is in partnership with the Alberta ESports association. “We’ve also had some minor partnerships, while not official partnerships, but we’ve been working with local groups that already have an ESports community. We’re hoping, now that we’re official and we’re under the Kodiaks athletics banner, we can now start to look at things like that either across the province or even federally.”

With official Kodiak jerseys, online profiles, and the support of the College, the ESports team will look to represent the Kodiak name online in the virtual arenas. “The Kodiaks are among the first few recognized varsity ESports teams in Alberta,” said Todd Caughlin, athletics and recreation services manager. “The work of last year’s team helped us establish the direction we’re now taking, and with the support of the college, we’re excited to see where it leads us.”

Tryouts for the team will be held in late August to early September.

“If people are interested in learning more about ESports or they’re students who maybe want to apply for tryouts in the fall, the best way to contact us would be through our ESports email lcesports@lethbridgecollege.ca” said Cikor.