By Christina Dimauro
Staff Reporter
Starting sometime this fall semester, Sacred Heart University will launch the newest club sport on campus, the Club Gaming Team.
The Club Gaming Team will be the 26 club sport offered at Sacred Heart.
Jim Barquinero, Senior Vice President of Enrollment, Student Affairs and Athletics, brought the idea of gaming to Ray Mencio, Director of Club Sports. The university likes to keep up to date with students’ interests and the Club Gaming Team is just one of them.
“It’s the fastest growing spectator sport around the world and games are played by people of all ages,” said Mencio. “This was something that can appeal to many students so we wanted to add something we haven’t offered before.”
Michael Delviscovo, who is the coach of the Club Gaming Team, Lead Senior Analyst and Co-Head Wrestling Coach, has many ideas and plans for the first year as a brand new club sport.
“There are two aspects to the Gaming Team; internal, where people who love to play games can come together and play tournaments, one idea I want to get off the ground is a staff versus student Smash Brothers tournament and external, where it’s students at Sacred Heart versus some other school playing games like League of Legends, Starcraft or Hearthstone,” said Delviscovo.
The Club Gaming Team will be a part of the C-Star League, which hosts competitions and tournaments for many popular video games. The C-Star League is comprised of schools across the country.
The school even recognized how popular the Club Gaming Team was going to be and built a gaming room in Jorge Bergoglio Hall. The new gaming room will offer a place for students to have fun, practice gaming and prepare for competitions.
The room features a screen, which is 16 feet by 4 feet, and has multiple functions, such as allowing multiple games to be shown at once. Also included are gaming systems like, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Wii.
“It’s really a state of the art addition to our campus. The room is going to add a very different dimension to campus and it’s something that is incredibly rare for a college campus to have,” said Mencio.
There was an interest meeting on Sept. 13, where over 50 students signed up and were able to learn more about the Club Gaming Team.
Initial student reactions have been extremely positive and have created a lot of excitment said Delviscovo.
“It’s crazy, I’ve gotten more emails in the past few days about video games more than anything else,” he said.
Both Delviscovo and Mencio expect to see high involvement from students on campus.
“As cheesy as this sounds, I just want to have fun and win games,” said Delviscovo, “I’m competitive myself so I’m excited to see where this team can go.”
If any students are interested in getting involved with the Club Gaming Team they are encouraged to email Michael Delviscovo at delviscovom@sacredheart.edu.
