Rocket League Trio Welcomes Esports Exclusively Women’s Team

A varsity Rocket League trio recently formed the first all-female team in esports. In 2021, WVU hosted its first esports contests, featuring teams playing Call of Duty, Valor, Madden NFL, and Rocket League.

The Women’s Rocket League team, which consists of junior Kira O’Connor and freshmen Emma Krol and Cayla Roberts, wants to compete in the mainly male-dominated university gaming league. 

Josh Steger, the WVU esports director and head coach of the varsity squad, asserts that there are only five women’s collegiate esports teams in the entire US. He said it had been essential to have representation. In sports, girls can go up against boys and triumph. It’s really crucial, in my opinion, that.

Krol was sought after by WVU throughout its extensive global search for candidates, which took them as far as Reitdiep, Netherlands. Krol, on the other hand, asserted that deciding to join the squad was a “spontaneous decision” and that he wasn’t looking for opportunities to play Rocket League at the collegiate level. She stated that after learning about me from another source, the director contacted me and that’s when things started to move forward. 

This summer, as members of the Women’s Carball Rocket League, Krol, O’Connor, and Roberts participated in competitions together before teaming up at WVU. Ahead of arriving on the campus of WVU, the squad had been prepping. 

This year, the team will compete in the Open Premier division of the National Association of Collegiate Esports Starleague as well as the National Esports Collegiate Conference. The men’s team will play in this division as only one team from each school is permitted to compete at the varsity level according to the league rules, and that team will be in that bracket.

It also hopes to make history by becoming the first all-female squad to be accepted into the Collegiate Rocket League. The group will compete against the men’s Rocket League esports group, who recently won a competition at the July College Carball Association Summer Series. 

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Steger said that the group is ready to demonstrate its skills to potential adversaries. “I think these guys are the first step of hopefully pushing the boundaries of a lot of programs out there in order to get them to accept this team and can do what I think they can do,” Steger said.

Every Monday at 7 p.m., all head-to-head matchups will be accessible on Twitch. WVU Esports is accessible for students to observe on X. 

The video game Rocket League, which includes motorized soccer, was designed and published by Psyonix. The game was initially released for the PlayStation 4 and Windows platforms in July 2015. Later, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch adaptations became available. In June 2016, 505 Games began offering a physical retail version for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment took over distribution towards the end of 2017. Despite versions for macOS and Linux being accessible in 2016, support for their online services was stopped in 2020. Players could access the game without charge starting in September 2020.