While the Gators may not have performed very well on the football field, the Gators in space have been unstoppable.
UF’s collegiate-league “StarCraft II“ team, a real-time strategy game set in space and played online, has been destroying competition since late October, and after six matchups, UF is undefeated.
“It’s actually been pretty easy,” said Fangzhou Hou, a computer engineering junior and one of the team’s star players. “I have a lot of confidence in our team, and hopefully we can win it all.”
The team formed a few months before their first match, brought together and coordinated by sophomore Tyler Reed.
Reed said he learned about the league through game forums online and quickly set about recruiting players through friends, forums and even picking talented players in local area network centers.
“It’s been better than I expected by far,” said Reed, who’s proud of the team’s success.
The Gators have already defeated their rivals at Florida State University, along with one of the league’s best teams, University of Waterloo.
“Our first game was when we made noise for ourselves,” said biochemistry senior Pavel Alekseyev, who recently took down a pro-level player from the University of Central Florida in a one-on-one match. “We’re the only undefeated team in our division … there’s really no modest way around it.”
The team plays 11 games before the top four teams from each division are sent to the playoffs. Their next match against the University of Regina is coming up on Saturday, but the players aren’t too worried about the competition.
“The whole team’s been doing really well,” Alekseyev said. “It’d be pretty hard to not get top four at this point.”
The team is still open to players who want to get in on the action. Interested students can e-mail Reed at reedt@ufl.edu.
“Even if you’re not a serious player, it’s a good resource,” Reed said. “We’re always down to help out.”
