Call of Duty Esports Huskies surge to top four finish in North America

The Keyano Huskies Esports Call of Duty program earned another strong result amongst their peers, placing in the top four of the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE)’s Spring Grand Finals at Full Sail University Orlando Health Fortress in Winter Park, Florida.  

“Honestly, we didn’t expect to go Top 4,” noted Jedrek de Guzman. “Conestoga was a team that we lost to every single time the past couple years. 
 
“We pulled them in the first part of the LAN for the first match we lost 3-1.”  
 
The team of Austin “astn” Mah, Brayden “Cruz” Currie, Alex “Shoku” Rendell, and Jeremy “ExZelios” Corrigal, along with coach Chason Christie were playing under a GSL bracket, which offers a double elimination format.  
 
That was good news for the Huskies, who lost the aforementioned 3-1 game to the Condors, but weren’t out of it just yet. The Huskies then rebounded to defeat the Texas A&M International University Dustdevils 3-0 to set up a rematch with the Condors.  
 
“We knew we had a chance to win,” de Guzman added. “We did really well in the search and destroy; weren’t going to win the hard points.  
 
“The third map, the control, was a big swing to determine who’s going to win or not. We were able to win that control and it was looking really good.”  
 
Completing the comeback in the fifth round, the Huskies put themselves into the top four, where they’d ultimately fall to the US-based Cumberland University, but still ended up with one of the top results in the program’s history.

“I know for the guys, they knew coming into it it’s going to be even ground,” de Guzman said. “We talked about ping and we try not to put that into our heads during matches.  
 
“It’s a big difference with the ping compared to other schools that are a little closer to the servers.”  

The opportunity to plan in a LAN (Local Area Network), compared to the usual remote setup also put the student-athletes under pressure.  

“It was a big difference as well to show performance and having that first kill or just one-on-one gunfights,” de Guzman continued. “Having it in person, the environment was different.  
 
“It does show how well Esports is going for us. We proved ourselves how good we are and how good we can really be.”