Tuesday Telecast April 19th, 2022

Good Morning folks! Welcome to the Tuesday Telecast, Des Moines Gaming Club’s weekly update. We’ve got a regularly scheduled week ahead here at the Club with casual play being available Tuesday-Thursday 1pm-10pm, Friday & Saturday 1pm-11pm, and Sunday 11am-5pm. Our weekly tournament schedule is normal too with our Fighting Game Community night Wednesday at 7pm with tournaments in Guilty Gear Strive and Tekken 7 along with plenty of friendly matches. Thursday night is Smash Bros. with Doubles at 6:30 and Singles to follow at 7pm. FIFA 22 is Friday at 7pm and Rocket League is Sudnay at 1pm. And as always if you are new to Des Moines Gaming Club and just want to come check the place out and ask questions we always offer free tours and will happily answer any questions you have. Besides coming in and checking the place out, you can email us at info@dsmgamingclub.com, call us at 515-850-2197, or message us on Facebook, Twitter, or Discord.

Now with the weekly announcements out of the way, I’d like to talk about something really cool we have in the works here at DMGC. For the past month or so I’ve been working with the Grandview University and Simpson College Esports programs to bring a Summer Camp that offers collegiate level coaching to middle school and high school students. This program will be for League of Legends and it will be every Friday from 1-3pm in the months of June and July so the first day of the camp will be Friday, June 3rd and then it will continue to be every Friday from 1-3pm. 

The first month of this program, which will be the 4 Fridays in June, will be focused on the Beginner’s level of competitive League of Legends. So, middle school and high school aged kids who are interested in League of Legends and might want to pursue esports at the collegiate level will be able to get evaluated on where they are at as a player in the first session by coaches from both Grandview and Simpson. Then, based on that evaluation the coaches will improve the students game session by session. Then, the month of July will be focused on the intermediate level of competitive League of Legends and so students can sign up for both months and go from beginner level to intermediate level, or they can just do one month and either do the beginner level or intermediate level or vice versa because it could be that a student has already played competitive League of Legends and might not need the beginner level coaching.

We will have an official announcement and more details soon but I couldn’t wait to share this program with you because myself and both esports program directors Nathan and Hubert are super excited about this. Collegiate esports are really taking off across the country and resources can be limited, especially here in Iowa so we can’t wait to provide the opportunity to students to not only improve their game with the coaches, but get in contact with these programs, learn more about college esports, and get started on a path that could lead to an esport scholarship. And conversely, Nathan with Grandview and Hubert with Simpson have told me that they are excited to be able to get more in touch with the esports and video game community of central Iowa and to possibly be able to find recruits for their programs. So, be on the lookout for more information on our social media pages, website, and I’ll be sure to talk more about it on future Tuesday Telecasts. We can’t wait.

That’l do it for news about the Club today, now we’ll move on to a bit of esports industry news. As we mentioned last week, the Valorant Champions Tour Stage 1 Masters Tournament in Iceland is underway and the finals will be played this upcoming weekend. Team Paper Rex convincingly took out G2 2-0 to advance in the Playoffs. ZETA Division beat TRX 2-1 in a highly contested match to send TRX home, and both team LOUD and OpTic Gaming are through to the Winner’s Final. Be sure to catch all of the action on Twitch.

In professional League of Legends, a new all time Jungle Kill Record has been set by Karsa, who plays for Victory Five in the Chinese Professional League. He got 17 kills which beat the previous record by 1 while not even using his main character. Karsa usually uses the character Lee Sin but switched things up in this match bringing out the Viego and boy did that pay off as they got the win and he got the all time kill record. This is yet more evidence that the Chinese League is producing the best players and teams and that they will be heavy hitters each year when Worlds rolls around.

Well, that’s gonne do it for today’s Tuesday Telecast. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next week.