YORK, Pa. — York College of Pennsylvania's (YCP) League of Legends team took home a trophy in a national esports competition this semester.
The team was one of just 21 groups competing in the National Esports Collegiate Conference (NECC) to take home a championship. In all, 152 teams participated.
“This means that the win is a fairly significant accomplishment; however, it's not on the same level, as say, Penn State winning their football championships,” Kyle Rosen, YCP’s director of esports, said. “This is the equivalent of a Division I team winning ‘state playoffs’ but not playing a "nationals" match.”
Rosen explained that the NECC's subsections are roughly equivalent to traditional sports: Big 10, Division I, Division II and Division III. The Big 10 are colleges that give full scholarships to students for esports, Champions and Challengers are equivalent to Division I, Emergents are equal to Division II and Navigators are equal to Division III.
“We fall under Challengers, placing us roughly at the lower end of a Division I team," Rosen said. "From there, NECC then splits us up into smaller conferences, ours being the Mideast conference, mostly so that we compete against local colleges that are around the same skill level.”
The League of Legends team is made up of six students: Luke Nall, a senior Computer Engineering major from Landenberg; Isaac Yoka, a junior Information Technology Management major from Mount Wolf; Logan Reese, a senior Mechanical Engineering major from Jackson, N.J.; Benjamin Reed, a junior Finance major from Finksburg, Md.; Roger Casado Sanchez, a sophomore Psychology major from York; and Aaron Davis, a first-year Undeclared major from Rochester, N.Y.
