With the rising popularity of esports, colleges and universities nationwide are picking up on the esports club trend where gamers not only compete against each other, but against other college teams as well. The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa team is gaining recognition in the largest collegiate league.
Leading the charge in the arena of esports at UH Mānoa are Nyle Sky Kauweloa, a graduate assistant at the School of Communications in the College of Social Sciences and Kevin Nguyen, a UH Mānoa communications graduate who now works full time as UH’s esports program assistant.
UH esports runs five teams across two games, Overwatch and League of Legends.
The UH collegiate esports team, which competed in the 2019 League of Legends Collegiate Starleague (CSL) tournament, received honorable mention in the CSL rankings and was noted as one of four teams in the Southwest region that remained undefeated after three weeks of regular season play. The other teams were from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), University of New Mexico and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
