This year’s Battle for Florida, an inter-collegiate in-person LAN, saw the top esports programs from around the state compete last weekend at USF. The event featured the top four teams that qualified for each of the three competitive titles.
The event featured eight schools from Florida competing in League of Legends, Rocket League, and VALORANT. The competing schools were:
- The University of South Florida
- Full Sail University
- University of Central Florida
- University of North Florida
- Florida Southern College
- University of Florida
- Florida International University
- Florida Tech
Battle for Florida 2024 also came in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, both of which caused incredible damage around the state. In the wake of those storms, everyone still managed to come together safely in Tampa and compete in-person.
The Big Winners From the 4th Battle for Florida
All the schools competing in-person at Battle for Florida already did well in overcoming the online qualifiers. Of the eight schools to attend in-person, Florida International University came out as the big winner.
FIU’s VALORANT team had a rough start to the competition, losing 2-1 to Florida Tech. Coming off that tough loss, FIU first brought down Full Sail University in the losers’ bracket before getting their redemption against Florida Tech, beating them 2-0.
It came down to FIU against the University of Florida, where FIU won 2-0 in both sets of Grand Finals matches to take home 1st place for VALORANT.
Not to be outdone, FIU’s Rocket League team won back-to-back nail-biter sets against the University of Florida and the University of South Florida. Both sets were won 4-3, but they did enough to make Winners’ side of Grand Finals against USF.
They stumbled in the first set of Grands, falling 1-4 to USF. FIU found the will to bounce back, though, taking Grand Finals Reset 4-1 to give FIU their second championship of the weekend.
Despite FIU having the most dominating school performance, no team came close in domination to USF’s League of Legends team.
They finished the entire League of Legends bracket without dropping a game, sweeping Full Sail University, and then University of Central Florida in both Winners’ and Grand Finals.
The Resurgence of Collegiate LANs
Despite starting over four years ago now, remnants of COVID-19 can still be felt in the disappearance of many in-person competitions. Even ESPN hosted their own in-person collegiate esports championship back in 2019.
The past few years have seen a slow return to in-person play. This is Battle for Florida’s fourth year running now, and it doesn’t seem to be the last regional collegiate LAN to pop up.
Lackawanna College Esports recently announced a new in-person Rainbow Six Siege invitational. Garden State Esports also recently began their in-person collegiate circuit in New Jersey.
It’s an exciting time in collegiate esports, as organizations large and small are creating additional in-person opportunities outside of the already plentiful online competitions.
Despite the ease and accessibility that competing online against teams from around the country brings, it’s impossible to replace the passion and community that comes about at in-person competitions held across the country.
With many esports programs now having greater budgets to be able to travel further distances, hopefully the drive to create bigger and better in-person events comes along with it.
