OH WE GAMING GAMING

Gaming is a large aspect of our culture in today’s society. It has been growing at a rapid pace to the point there are now gaming clubs and competitions being created all over the country taking gaming to the next level.

Greenville University was blessed to partake in the gaming industry all because of this super cool, awesome guy by the name of BJ Fink. It was about March 2018 when he was asked to be the staff advisor for the gaming club calling it “ESPORTS”.

ESPORTS is a competitive gaming club and there is a huge push for it in the college scene. Back in 2014, there were only 95 teams in the country. These teams were high school, university, and private clubs. After four years, that number jumped drastically up to 1200, with 475 teams at the university level. Greenville University ESPORTS has had the opportunity to compete against D1-D3 universities during their existence. Last year they played schools such as Penn State, Arizona State, and other large and small schools. Last year it was just the pilot program to see if it was feasible. Fink discussed how they had a “Rainbow Six” team & an “Overwatch” group that competed in those competitions.

Right now, most of the competitions usually take place on PC reason being it’s faster. The only game that’s not played on PC is “Super Smash Brothers” which is played on the Nintendo Switch. Fink is also looking to launch an NBA 2K team as well. An interesting part of ESPORTS is that this year a game may be popular and next year it won’t, so one of the things that Fink looks for in recruits are versatile players. He doesn’t want you to spend all your time on just one game he wants you to master multiple games in case-specific games lose their popularity.

When you think about recruiting you tend to think about big-name sports like football, basketball, and baseball. Fink went out recruiting for the Greenville University team. His recruiting has gone well enough that we now have an official varsity program this year! A lot of the high schools now have ESPORTS teams which allow him to get in touch with students. Fink does a handful of his recruiting by playing video games online with kids that he plans on recruiting to test out and see how good they are at gaming to make the program valuable. As of now, there are 40 players, and about 15 players that play different games that came to play this year on the Greenville ESPORTS team.

When we asked Fink how he got into the gaming world his response was gold. “I’ve been a tech geek since I don’t know a long time ago”. It started when Fink was a kid. Back in the 90’s his parents wouldn’t let him buy an actual Xbox or PlayStation console with his allowance, but they had a family computer. So, he started playing games and learned how they worked and how to build them. When he was in high school he got into animations and working on computers. “So I’ve always been a PC guy and a gamer at heart” Fink stated, playing games that a lot of people don’t play right now, games like RTS games (Real-Time Strategy). He was also an IT worker for a few years so everything just fit when he moved here, and look at him now!

Something unique about Fink that nobody knows is that he’s an amateur Archaeologist. He is working on a master’s program Near Eastern Archaeology. He has been on several Excavations and is finishing up his graduate studies which is a little hard to do with having a beautiful newborn baby girl. Fink looks forward to teaching someday as well. An everyday quote that he uses in life is “focus on the solution and not the problem”. Meaning there are things that go on in life, for an example a computer not working and everyone complaining, that doesn’t fix the problem. You have to get the computer up and running, and focusing on the solution and not the problem.

Looking forward to exploring more interesting things with Mr. Fink and his ESPORTS team as they get better and better day by day. #OHWEGAMINGGAMING!!!

Media by: Derreion Twitty