These past two weekends have been storybook for #1 Fisher College. First, they reached grand finals at Fragadelphia York 2026 losing to IEM Cologne Major hopefuls Voca, then qualified for PGL Astana becoming the first collegiate team to compete at a Tier 1 Counter-Strike event.
This comes after Fisher College shook the collegiate CS2 scene with the introduction of #3 FC Detonate roster in January. Now in the NECC playoffs and on opposite sides of the bracket, there is a very real chance of a Fisher College vs. Fisher College grand finals.
In an exclusive interview with assistant director of esports at Fisher College, Aaron Colaiacomo, he discusses Fisher’s recruitment strategies, how they stay competitive in a growing scene, why Esports is so important to Fisher College and where they fit in the growing collegiate CS2 space.
*Answers have been shortened and edited for brevity and clarity.
So it sounds like when it comes to so many different titles and so many different games, how do you personally keep track of all of them? Do you rely on the coaches to do a lot of the recruiting? How does that kind of work at Fisher?
Yeah, I mean, we don’t have like a ton of paid coaches. The full time staff members that we have and even part time staff like those paid, dedicated people. It’s about 7 or 8 people that we have right now. There’s certain games that they [focus on], those top five games and collegiate, those are the ones where essentially you need a dedicated person.
What are those games?
Right now it’s Rocket League, Overwatch, League of Legends, VALORANT and Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. And the reason that we come to those five games, if you look up the Trends in College Esports [Report], which is put out by Chris Postell, who’s a really cool guy. Those are the five games where schools have a greater than 50% adoption. If you put like the average or median college program, they’re going to have those games. It’s when we start getting into the Call of Duty. Call of Duty is fast approaching and is fast approaching that 50% mark. But it’s still at like a 45% mark.
So having someone that is dedicated to particularly those divisions are key. With the other games though, typically we will be heavily reliant on students and student coaches and student managers to help either identify the talent or even just help with some facet of, the, the day to day operations for the games.
Now I want to specifically talk about the Counter-Strike roster and the process of building that team. Could you walk me through that?
When we first were looking to get into Counter-Strike, it was something that Jackson [Brown] actually approached me with. He has a deep background within Counter-Strike. And he’s like,
You know, this is definitely a game that there’s not a lot of people in it and it kind of works on that blue ocean strategy.
What is this Blue Ocean Strategy?
Our blue ocean Strategy is where it’s finding your means in an area that doesn’t have a lot of competition. If I’m recruiting for Rocket League, or VALORANT, or League of Legends, I have to recruit with Maryville, Northwood or Winthrop. I lost a Rocket League player to Winthrop. I lost a League of Legends player to Northwood this year, and I’ve lost multiple VALORANT players to Maryville, over the past couple of years. And again, they’ve lost players to us.
But when I look at Counter-Strike, it’s going to be the difference between do you want to go play for a club team at a big school, or do you want to come here and have a dedicated team, dedicated resources, dedicated travel resources, dedicated scholarships and that kind of stuff.
And it’s a no brainer at that point for those individual students. My Europeans, they wouldn’t be here in America if it wasn’t for Fisher. All four of them, none of them would be here in America. And then the other Europeans that we’re currently talking to bring in this fall term, a lot of these kids wouldn’t have that opportunity. Tommy “Corn” Eckhart would not have gone back to school had he not been offered a scholarship for his fifth year.
But the opportunities that we’re offering here, no one else is offering them.
And that’s why within the second year of the Smash team, I didn’t lose players to anybody. And Fisher became known as the Smash School and all of that. Basically it was like a hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby situation where no one beat us. We actually were able to split our teams into two and we won and we got fourth or fifth [nationally]. So finally it took people around three years to actually get into the competitive nature to where they could even hope to, to compete against my guys.
There’s plenty of people who are playing these games, and honestly, you only need to make a big investment in one roster and then you can make multiple different rosters. Another huge reason is that eventually we’re going to run out of students and we’re kind of seeing that in a lot of these other games.
There’s a math problem where the number of students that are incoming are not superseding the number of students that are outgoing in terms of the competitive scene.
How many rosters are in League of Legend are title contenders? You have Winthrop, Ole Miss, UST, Fisher, Northwood, Maryville. That’s already six, St. Clair could be title contenders in and of their own right. We’ll call it eight rosters that are essentially title contenders. If we’re cycling those 40 kids over a four year period, there aren’t 40 new professionals that are coming in or professionals that are retiring from that scene that can then go back into collegiate, or high level players that can then go back into that scene.
Is that why you kind of focus on multiple rosters? Is then you shift to developing maybe talent that’s not quite at that level yet?
Exactly. So we have individual students like Carlos “Talisman” Santiago is a great example for Overwatch where he was on Team Puerto Rico. He was starting on the second team and he moved his way up. And now is our starting DPS player on the Fisher Overwatch roster.
So again, it’s that talent development in surrounding him with veterans like Dylan “Grapes” Watts who was on WISP. You have Isaiah “Hydron” Rodriguez, who was on Florida Mayhem and won an OWL title. So you have a lot of veterans and you surround those new players with those veterans. They’re going to help teach them, but then you also surround them with good coaches.
And so you kind of have to do two things: You have to start progressing your own talent within, that’s why we identify a lot of students that are those high level individuals, but may not be quite there yet. And you can swing and miss just like you do in college basketball but know that people are going to develop differently and people are going to have different types of development. And having multiple rosters gives us not only security to make sure that we are, you know, going to be continually competing at a high level.
If you are a Counter-Strike player and let’s say you’re 18 and you’re trying to go to college, or maybe you’re a 22-year-old and you just got knocked out of Advanced for the 18,000,000th time, if you look at colleges, are you going to go to the college that’s a club team or a college that says: hey, not only are we going to support you, we’re going to have you still follow your major passion while you earn that degree, and you have that opportunity to do everything that you have been doing, but more. It’s a no brainer. It’s a very clear choice.
What is kind of your long term vision for the Counter-Strike scene and your place in that vision?
We’re continuing to do everything that we’ve been doing and that kind of still be that premier place that Counter-Strike people are looking for. But it is also what that investment is going to actually look like from these other programs? Like there’s so many other programs that are out there and people that are now starting to invest in Counter-Strike. And they’re getting scholarships and you have Northwood that has some phenomenal players as well. They’ve been probably one of our biggest competitors up until this point.
The main criticism for this squad is the fact that they are from Europe but going to school in the US. Do you feel like this squad represents North America? Is that something that matters to you guys?
I mean, you can’t look at it from a professional stance that we are going in and representing North America. Of course, we are representing North America. The bigger picture is that these students are representative of Fisher College. When you look at a collegiate basketball team or you look at the NBA, you don’t say, is the Oklahoma City Thunder inclusive of North America because they have European players on it?
Rather, these are the professional students playing in a professional tournament that are representative of their team and of the team that brought them together. And so I would say that they are a fantastic representation of Boston, the city, Massachusetts, the state, and of course, America.
At this point, they are representatives of America because they are living that American dream. This is the best that the Americans have to offer. They are representative of what it means for Counter-Strike.
What do you guys look at and how do you justify the cost of the scholarship money and stuff and things like that? What return on investment for you guys for all the recruiting and scholarships and travel?
We feel every school is cognizant of the enrollment cliff that’s coming along. Every school is going to see like a 15 to 20% reduction in enrollment. Well, if you have a 15 to 20% reduction in your revenue, and schools have already been operating at losses, enrollment is obviously a key KPI for any institution with any of these programs.
Marketability is obviously another big KPI. How many students are coming in from our generalized marketing around the program? That’s always been a big push for us and making sure that we get our program out there as much as possible and in front of as many people as possible, but also to make sure that we are graduating students.
We actually got word today, which is really cool that I get to share that with you. But, we’re going to have our second valedictorian as part of the esports program within four years.
Our first valedictorian was Roodman “Seranok” Morón Granadillo. He was the starting mid laner for the League of Legends team. This year, it’s our Smash coach Emily “Kiwi” Wajda. So she’s going to be graduating this year as valedictorian. And we literally just got word today. We’ve had the other two years, we’ve had salutatorians, so we’ve had two salutatorians and two valedictorians within the past few years.
From a high education standpoint, making sure that our students are graduating on time and making sure that we are able to graduate students and then help push them through and help them earn their education is a key piece. We also like to recognize that 56 people this past semester had a 4.0 GPA.
Since PGL Astana falls outside the school calendar and after some members graduate, how is Fisher going to support the players on their trip? Will there be a European bootcamp?
So unfortunately, no, we’re not looking at doing a European boot camp. We are still trying to figure out some of these big questions since Tommy “Corn” Eckhart graduates that weekend. He is going to be finishing his degree in criminal justice that weekend and is supposed to walk across the stage. Nils “ReFuZR” Groot has a girlfriend who will be graduating from Fisher also. We have students where again, visas and I-20 sometimes are only pertinent until they leave the country and are only valid until the start of May.
So it is a logistical nightmare. But these students are Fisher College students until the last collegiate competition rings in my mind. And therefore we are going to be doing the fullest support to them to this tournament as well as continuing the search for the next great replacement for Tommy and then our other players as they begin to graduate.
All right. I think I think that’s it for me. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Thank you so much!
Fisher College is set to play in the NECC playoffs and set to face #2 RIT tomorrow. On the opposite side of the bracket, FC Detonate is set to face off against #6 UBC which creates the real possibility for an all-Fisher College NECC grand finals. Fisher College is also set to play on LAN as a part of the PCL playoffs at CECC from May 1-3.
