Last week, the Call of Duty team’s two College CoD Premier League (CCL) matches were disrupted by a forfeit and last minute rescheduling. Florida International University, who holds a 0-14 record, forfeited their match planned for Feb. 19. St. Edward’s went on to win 3-1 in their second match against Georgia Southern University, who holds a 1-7 record.
The SEU team also opted out of continuing to play in NACE Starleague, as there were too many matches a week for their schedule. They will continue playing in the Spring 2024 CCL and in the College XP (CXP) Call of Duty league.
On Feb. 26 at 6:30 p.m, the team kicked off their seventh match in the CCL against University of Texas Chattanooga’s esports team. The rules remain the same: The first team to garner three different playstyle wins takes the match.
The first round was Hardpoint on map Rio, where both teams try to capture an objective area on the map. For every second the team holds the area uncontested, it amasses one point. Chattanooga was held to a low 32 points and the Hilltoppers’ lead stretched up to 141. They were able to amass an 181 point lead before UTC made another push up to 48 points. UTC tried making efforts to come back but couldn’t get more than 20 points at a time without St. Edward’s recapturing the area. The Hilltoppers won with a final score of 250-98. Lucas “Ballah” Muccio topped their leaderboard with 20 kills and a 155-second time capturing the hardpoint uncontested.
Next up was Search & Destroy on map Karachi. Similar to Hardpoint, Search & Destroy alternatively switches teams to attacking or defending two bomb points on the map while having no respawns. The first team to attain six round victories takes the win. St. Edward’s won the first round almost immediately by eliminating all enemy lives and followed the same sentiment in the second round. For the third round, Johnny “Vanity” Albano and David “Eons” Sauseda were the last alive but were able to secure another win. Ballah then went on to get the final kill in the following two rounds. Mauricio “Thresh” Pallares had the final kill on the last round, and solidified a 6-0 sweep in Search & Destroy. Vanity and Eons tied for 11 kills and one bomb plant each to top the leaderboard.
Finally, the teams played Control on map Invasion. Control, similar to Search & Destroy, has teams either attacking or defending two bomb points on the map, but with a total of 30 team lives. They won the first round after securing both points on the map. Thresh secured a 10-kill killstreak in the second round, and won after defending the points until time ran out. Ballah captured point “B” and the team also captured point “A” to win the third round. Thresh topped the leaderboard with 18 kills and six captured points. Ballah tied with him at six captures.
The match was one of their shortest ever, lasting about 35 minutes. Their second CCL match was rescheduled for an undetermined date. They will be playing another match on Feb. 27 at 8 p.m. in the CXP league against the number one ranked team in the country, Oklahoma Christian University, who they lost to in the semifinals of NACE Starleague last year. Stay updated on their social media.
