2019 HPU Scholarship Tournament

The 2019 HPU Scholarship Tournament was an open registration tournament planned by the Hawaii Pacific University but was still available for teams not affiliated with HPU. The teams were made up of at least 5 people. These teams would compete against each other in a randomized bracket format in video games. The games these teams would be playing were either “League of Legends” or “Overwatch” depending on which game they registered to play for. My team and I had registered for the “League of Legends” tournament. People playing one game would not play against people who were playing the other game. League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), much like a team-based strategy game where two teams of five powerful champions face off to destroy the other’s base.

League of Legends requires lots of communication, patience, and teamwork by its nature of being a competitive game. However, because there are also so many things that each player has to micromanage, someone has to also macromanage the game and the team. My role in my team was to be the shot caller, the one in charge of macro management. My team had made it to the finals of the tournament after several days of playing back-to-back games in the HPU eSports Arena. After a grueling 4 hours, we, unfortunately, were unable to win our 5-game series and the tournament but we had managed to get 2nd place.

Through this experience, I learned a lot about teamwork and communication due to my role as the shot-caller. I had to understand the state of both the game we were playing as well as the players who were playing along with me. I had to take into consideration their strengths, weaknesses, and habits so I could plan accordingly. This kind of skill, I believe, is very important when it comes to project management because a project leader, I would assume, has very similar responsibilities. They have to consider the project they’re undertaking and what their team member’s capabilities are as well which is why I consider this to be a very valuable learning experience as well as a very fun event.

Here is my medal that I earned from the tournament