As life without Fordham athletics continues, students and the athletic department are slowly developing a new alternative to intramural sports. 

Over the summer, Assistant Athletic Director Michael Roberts announced that Fordham will now support eSports, or competitive gaming, for students looking for casual competition that also conforms to strict social distancing guidelines.

In a message to students on Aug. 7, Roberts said that he was inexperienced with gaming but sought help to discover “the ins and outs of platforms, crossover games … and pro sports games versus some of the insane titles out there today.”

Through IMLeagues, the website that Fordham Athletics typically uses to post listings for intramural sports, students can now sign up for a variety of gaming leagues featuring individual and team competition. Some of the games available include Fortnite, League of Legends and Madden NFL 21, and players can access these games and many more through the PlayStation 4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch or PC.

eSports give students a new opportunity to interact with fellow students in a casually competitive environment.

With time and further research, Roberts and the athletic department created a varied competitive gaming environment supported by Fordham so that students can partake in recreational campus activities without violating public health guidelines. 

It isn’t a perfect substitution, but for students like Jack Kichula, Fordham College at Rose Hill ’21, it’s an even more exciting opportunity.

For eight years, Kichula has competed in eSports across several different games and naturally approved of Fordham Athletics’ new initiative. The senior student said, “When the traditional methods for getting together were taken away because of COVID, I think eSports is the best you can get to a replacement of team competition.”

The advantages of eSports in this new health-conscious environment are fairly obvious. Unlike sports contested in-person, an eSports team can collaborate and compete remotely. In addition, when sports simply aren’t feasible, eSports give students a new opportunity to interact with fellow students in a casually competitive environment. 

According to Kichula, Fordham has never attempted anything like this, and its recent development has given it a looser structure than formal intramural sports. Instead of a set schedule for competition, “the format is a regular season as long as the school year where teams challenge each other whenever they are available to play.”

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These gaming leagues benefit very few people beyond the players themselves, but the usual intramural sports serve a very similar purpose. The competition isn’t intense or heavily regulated, and the results are largely inconsequential. It’s a way for people to pass time, and the university has provided another form of entertainment for students to take advantage of on their own schedule.

Unfortunately, the news of eSports at Fordham hasn’t yet attracted the same attention that other intramural efforts have enjoyed previously. Kichula said, “I think it’s gone under the radar for most students, which is unfortunate … I’m aware that eSports caters to a smaller audience than traditional sports, but I don’t think a lot of students are aware of its existence.”

On the IMLeagues page, there are currently multiple gaming leagues that have not yet received a single signup. For those XBox One owners looking to test their skills in Madden NFL 21, there’s no one available to challenge. Fordham gamers playing Call of Duty on the PlayStation 4 are missing in action. On the League of Legends page, Kichula’s five-person squad only has two other teams with which to compete.

The future of Fordham’s newest intramural program depends on the interest of its most passionate gamers. The effort has been made by the administration, and they’ve now left it for students to take advantage. 

A world of casual online competition awaits Fordham students looking for a way to interact with their friends in a safe environment. They can be football players, soldiers or heroes from imaginary worlds, competing alongside their fellow Fordham escapists. All they have to do is log on.