Shaun McAvoy ‘22
Associate Sports Editor
Over the course of the last few weeks, a few Merrimack students have been representing the college in the first-ever college gaming championship. This tournament, presented by Barstool Sports, has 64 Barstool-affiliated programs at different colleges across the country competing in Call of Duty Warzone. This is the first-ever Barstool tournament of this kind.
Every Wednesday from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m, players across the country are dropping into Verdansk, trying to earn bragging rights for their school and win the tourney. The Merrimack team is set to go against Grand Canyon University in the “Sweaty 16” this Wednesday, November 17.
The tournament began with 64 teams across the country. Players were selected from applications that were sent to the head of the Barstool affiliate here at Merrimack, or better known as stoolmerrimack on campus, Nick Fasoli. From there, they began practicing together and becoming a team. Merrimack’s team consists of team captain Brandon Lavallee, Matthew Gangi, and Justin Sensale, as well as alternate Caleb Stott. The boys have to stream every Wednesday night game they play in order for the scores from those games to be counted. They also have to all have the same clan tag connected with their name, which is the same for every single player across the country competing in this tournament. They earn points based on their rankings in each game, along with the number of kills that the team combines for. The top two teams who battle it out for the championship at the end will get custom Barstool jackets, a championship belt for their school, meet with Barstool personalities, and finally, be featured on different Barstool Sports social media platforms.
One of the main motivations that students from Merrimack have for competing in this tournament is to put Merrimack on the map and show that they can compete with all of the other big schools. They have been getting a lot of viewers in their streams each week, with over three hundred last week. In the round of 64, Merrimack showed up and proved they could play with the best of them, moving on as the seventh-best team. The following two weeks, in the round of 32, Merrimack maintained their high level of play and went into the “Sweaty 16” as the 13th seed playing against Grand Canyon University. Make sure to watch Merrimack attempt to upset Grand Canyon University this Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. on twitch at stoolmerrimack, #VIVALAMACK.
