The NACE Starleague Spring 2024 Varsity Premier Grand Finals took place during a thrilling 2-day event in Orlando, Florida. On April 27th-28th, 14 teams across seven games arrived to fight for a chance at their championship title in Full Sail University’s Orlando Health Fortress Esports Arena.
Throughout the Spring 2024 semester, over 18,000 students competed in online tournament brackets to make it to this moment to represent their school on stage. Audiences could cheer on their favorites live and in-person, or tune into NACE Starleague’s Twitch stream to watch the spectacle unfold.
Winners
Over the course of two action packed days, the winners have been crowned!
- Overwatch 2: Illinois State University (Redbird Esports)
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Lubbock Christian University (LCU Esports)
- League of Legends: Maryville University (Maryville Esports)
- Rocket League: West Virginia University (WVU Esports)
- Call of Duty: St. Clair College (St. Clair Saints Esports)
- Counter-Strike 2: Syracuse University (Syracuse Esports)
- Rainbow Six Siege: University of Akron (Akron Zips Esports)
Day One
Overwatch 2
The grand finals initially began with an upset to the Overwatch 2 predictions held by many in the audience. Two powerhouses in the collegiate Overwatch scene, Maryville University and the Illinois State Redbirds, were set to face off against each other.
Over the years, both teams have garnered respect, along with a multitude of titles within both collegiate and professional play. Maryville’s roster consisted of the same players within their recent partnership with Luminosity Gaming for the Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS). Therefore, fans assumed that Maryville would easily take home the win. However, in an exhilarating match up, Maryville ending up losing as the Redbirds swept the score 3-1!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
New York-based Stony Brook University faced off against Texas-based Lubbock Christian University in a series of one-on-one Super Smash Bros. Ultimate matchups. Each school brought their best five players to duke it out over a best of three series. Tensions were high as Stony Brook looked to claim their third championship win with a top 100 nationwide player on their roster. However, in yet another upset, it was LCU that managed to snatch the title by 2-0 overall!
LCU is proud of their star player, Tiki ‘Spritzy’ Duella and his successful back-to-back eliminations of three Stony Brook players.
League of Legends
Maryville University faced off against St. Clair College in League of Legends. Both came into the finals undefeated throughout the NACE Starleague Spring 2024 playoffs. But there could only be one champion, and it was Maryville University that claimed this crown 2-0.
Aidan ‘Niles’ Tidwell, top-laner for Maryville, comments about his team and how they prepared to play against the St. Clair Saints: “We definitely prepared what champions we wanted to play,” he said. “That game plan really showed our mid and our jungle really popped off, Spirax and Yuuji. And we really wanted to set them up going into the series.”
Rocket League
Due to a flight cancellation, the Akron Zips were not able to make it to the match in person. Yet this would not stop an intense match between the Zips and West Virginia University. Although this was the last game of the night, the crowd’s animated cheers could be heard throughout the Full Sail arena.
Akron Zips and West Virginia University brought the series all the way to game 7 overtime. With the overtime clock ticking away, MATTER secured the win for West Virginia with the golden goal. Jarret ‘Angel’ Birch gave some insight into the match in an interview after the big win:
Day Two
Call of Duty
Day two marked the kickoff of the Call of Duty grand finals. The St. Clair Saints CoD team were set to face off against Oklahoma Christian University.
In 2023, OC Esports achieved 2nd place in the College Call of Duty Playoffs, and weren’t looking to keel over easily. Nevertheless, the St. Clair Saints declared themselves the victor in a 4-1 game series. We had the opportunity to interview the St. Clair Saints team after their match. Together, they comment on how they’ve previously lost to OC Esports in online tournaments over the years:
Counter-Strike 2
Counter-Strike 2 was the second game of the day with a match between Syracuse University and Oklahoma Christian University.
OC Esports felt good, taking a win in the first map against Syracuse that had the audience eager to see more. In spite of their loss, Syracuse came back to the stage seeking vengeance. They swept the next two maps and took the trophy home with a 2-1 win over OC Esports. Recently this past semester, Syracuse Esports was just promoted from a club into an official esports program. This would be the first national championship that they would bring home in any title!
Rainbow Six Siege
The final title up for grabs at the NACE Starleague Spring 2024 Grand Finals was Rainbow Six Siege. Akron University and Butler University both sought to claim this final title.
Butler Esports started off strong, although it seems the Bulldogs could not outrun the Zips as Akron defeated them in a 2-0 series.
Full Sail University’s Involvement
The NACE Starleague Grand Finals of Spring 2024 couldn’t have been done without the generous assistance of Full Sail University. During the course of the weekend, over 80 Full Sail students worked hard to set up the Orlando Health Fortress Esports Arena into a formidable atmosphere for the arriving teams. Students claimed roles ranging from backstage technicians to on-stream talent.
Full Sail University’s Director of Esports and Project Development, Sari Kitelyn, comments on what it means to be able to take on such an impactful event:
This wraps up the NACE Starleague Spring 2024 Grand Finals. Stay tuned to our website and socials for more college esports news.
