Conference One: Interview with Penn State's Valorant Coordinator
Not known yet as an esports powerhouse, Penn State spent their Fall season competing in Conference One for Valorant. After a very exciting and impressive Fall season for Conference One, Penn State reflected on its success. Brandon Holzhauer discussed his thoughts on the past season and what to look forward to for Penn State.
Penn State was a new team coming into the season, but that did not show. Holzhauer talked about the pride for the program, by saying "Going into the season, I had very high expectations for my team, and by the end of the season, they blew my expectations out of the water. As a new team, they went undefeated in the season. I was a little bit upset about them not making it far in the playoffs, but since it was the first time they played together in this setting, I am proud of my players and how they did this season. "Though they did not make it far, they had a great run to add onto for the years to come.
When entering tough competition with a new team and having that much success, they clearly had to get some work in together. Holzhauer layed out their preseason work, by stating "Before the season, they would just play in tournaments and scrims pretty much three times a week. They would meet for VoD reviews and even ranked games whenever they had the chance. They went out of their way to make their team better, even more than I initially said they would have to when I tried them out earlier this year. "Even just the slight work that they got in was enough to build a strong base moving forward.
Clearly, there had to be a leadership role to be taken considering the new origins of the team. Holzhauer indicated a couple of players that stepped up, "The main players that stepped up were RipOne and Ev0. They would get the team together, and they would really push to be the greatest that they could. Yet the whole team was into it, and those two players went beyond the expectations of the leadership when it was really needed." The added leadership left Penn State in a good position to be successful this season, and they took advantage of that.
Going into next year, Penn State will look to take advantage of the foundations they laid this year. For their off-season plan, Holzhauer explained, "We will continue to work on team coordination. As Redgar from Gambit said, coordination can only really be perfectly built from doing scrims and VoD reviews for about two years. All of my players are very fast at improving, so we will see where they are at the beginning of this spring season." This work will hopefully lead Penn State to its end goal for Spring. As for what their goal is, Holzhauer kept it pretty simple, "Honestly, this team has already exceeded any prior thoughts I had about them. I don't need to see a trophy or another undefeated season. I just want to see improvements from the players and really just them showing up to play their best game. I still would like to see them in the playoffs, but if they don't make it, I know they tried their best, and that's all I can ask for." Penn State will look to complete that goal in Spring Conference One play.
