The biggest club on campus began with four people around a table.
Vandal LoL, UI”s League of Legends club, began about three years ago when current club President Josh Hill assembled a group of friends to organize a tournament, said Robert Comley, a University of Idaho senior and virtual technology and design major.
“A good friend of mine hosted a tournament on campus that got a lot of gamers together,” Hill said. “A couple of months later, we started the League of Legends club together because we realized there were so many people on campus interested in the game.”
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Students play League of Legends and other games during Vandal Overnight Saturday, Oct. 3., in the Idaho Commons.
Although the club is relatively young, Hill said one of the best indicators of the game”s popularity on campus is how quickly the club”s membership has grown.
“Instantly, as soon as we made the club”s Facebook page, we got like 60 people overnight,” Hill said. “We had a meeting the next day and 30 to 40 people showed up … since then, the roster just keeps growing.”
As of Thursday afternoon, there were 256 members on the Facebook group.
Comley, who serves as the club”s tournament director, said there are a little over 100 people who regularly come to tournaments.
The club often partners with ITS, and Comley said the majority of their tournaments are held at ITS events, such as Vandal Overnight.
“The turnout for Vandal Overnight was 20 teams with a total of 104 participants,” Comley said of the latest event. “We put everyone into four big rooms on the fourth floor of the Commons and it still wasn”t enough space.”
Whether a tournament is held in conjunction with Vandal Overnight or not, Comley said all the Vandal LoL events are BYOC, which stands for “Bring Your Own Controller.”
“Everyone brings their own computer boards, headsets, mice, whatever they need, they bring it,” Comley said.
We”ve started working with ITS a lot and they”ve been so much help, they save us a lot of time on setting up.” Comley said.
Comley said Vandal LoL”s next tournament, which will be hosted solely by the club, will be held in the spring. He said the two-day tournament will have a group stage and then a bracket stage on the second day.
In addition to hosting tournaments, Hill said one of the club”s goals is to help establish a larger e-sport following on campus.
“My favorite part of this club is being able to provide a fun environment for gamers to get together in,” he said.
In addition to creating an e-sport scene, Hill said providing an engaging environment for students to play games in is one of the most rewarding aspects of hosting tournaments.
“We invite WSU students to a lot of our events, it”s a much bigger school with more money, but their club members still tell us we run all the best tournaments,” Hill said. “That”s the best part of what we do, we do a good job of providing people with good tournaments.”
Corrin Bond can be reached at arg-news@uidaho.edu