The Sam Houston State University Esports Club will host a Local Area Network (LAN) party Friday.
The SHSU Esports Club was originally founded in 2012 with a focus on two things: organizational purpose and collegiate gaming.
The organizational aspect of the club involves creating social events for students who are interested in gaming. Though the club’s main focus is video games, it also has a place for people who enjoy playing trading card games, board games and table top games.
“We are open to all gaming, because as an organization, we want to make a home and a community for all gamers at Sam Houston State University,” Esports Club President Gabriel Heiman said.
The club provides its main organizational events through its LAN parties. These parties encourage gamers to bring their own systems to play with others. For people who bring their personal computers but are worried about lugging the equipment around, the club provides a dolly system to help bring the computers into the party. These LAN parties have raffles in which participants can enter and win prizes from the club.
The club offers five collegiate teams for its members. The gaming teams are for the games “Counter Strike Global Offensive,” “League of Legends,” “Hearthstone,” “Heroes of the Storm” and “Overwatch.”
The teams enter collegiate tournaments like Heroes of the Dorm, the University League of Legends tournament, Hearthstone Collegiate Championship and many others. These tournaments offer college gamers a chance to test their skills against other universities for chances to win scholarship money.
“The thing that we want most out of our collegiate teams is that we hope that the players on those teams will eventually go on to become pro players in the games that they play,” Heiman said.
The SHSU Esports Club will host its last LAN party of the semester Friday in Lowman Student Center room 320. The event is open to anyone interested. More information can be found at the SHSU Esports Facebook page.