Athlete League: great success for the first edition of the online mega-tournament
Athlete League
A unique and unexpected success, a record-breaking event that consecrates MCES Italia among the most innovative and dynamic realities of the Italian Esports scene, also thanks to the recent capital increase that involved new partners such as Alessio Calabrò of Rait88.Atleta League, the online mega-tournament organized by the Rome-based club together with the sports journalism L'Atleta, ended on 7 March.
The event, which with 14,093 players was the amateur competition Esports with the most participants in the history of our country, has distributed a prize pool of 30,000 euros on the most important video games. The Fortnite tournament was the dominant feature, with the highest number of subscribers with 3,619 players, while to follow we find FIFA with 3,543 players in the three categories PS4, Xbox and Pro Club.
Excellent feedback too for Warzone (1,056 teams and 3,168 players) and Brawl Stars (715 teams and 2,145 players) competitions. Finally, the PUBG Mobile, League of Legends and PES tournaments with several hundred players each should also be mentioned.
Record numbers, with the winners who managed to win in front of the large audience that followed the races on Twitch.
Here is the list of teams and players who triumphed in the 2021 edition of Atleta League, the first of a format that will surely have followed:
- League Of Legends Winners: Team "Randoms Never Give Up" | Prize: 5x Alienware Aurora PC worth € 1000
- Warzone Winners: Team 1º Maybe.Pro; 2nd Wu; 3º Gl17ch | Prize: 3x Alienware Aurora PC worth 1000 €
- Brawl Stars Winners: Team F / A Maple (Georgeh, Matty, Ale) | Prize: 3x Iphone 12 Pro Max 256
- Fortnite Winners: 11mc L74 (Eleven Monkeyz Academy) | Prize: Alienware PC + Alienware Keyboard and Mouse + Alienware 240hz Monitor
- Pes Winners: Aedrid97 | Sony Ps5 Award
- Fifa Ultimate Team PS4 Winners: Antoniodegy | Prize: Sony Ps5 + Alienware Monitor
- Fifa Ultimate Team Xbox Winners: Xgr7x | Prize: Xbox Series X + Alienware Monitor
- Fifa Pro Club Winners: Fc Dream Team | Prize: 1500 € in Amazon vouchers
- Pubg Mobile winners: Team Unknown 6 | Prize: 4x Iphone 12 Pro Max 256.
“This tournament, the first major online event organized by MCES Italia together with the Athlete, was for us a testing ground and an opportunity to affirm ourselves once again more as a leading company of Italian gaming ”- says Tommaso Maria Ricci, general manager of MCES Italia -“ We are really satisfied with the outcome of this event, both in terms of participation and of media and public feedback. As MCES Italia we will continue to work for the development of Esports, and this also passes through the organization of such important events ".
Giulio Gezzi, Managing Director of Atletanews.sport is also satisfied:" The Athlete League is It was a different tournament from those we are used to in the Italian panorama, an experiment that was certainly successful. Not only for the respectable prize money and a very high level organization, thanks to the precious support of MCES Italia, but above all because we have given the right depth to this world, to the many young people who animate it and to the thousand professionalism, opportunities and potential. that offers. We are therefore proud to have given this tournament the name of our magazine ".
Peninsula Athletic League football off and running in San Mateo County
The Half Moon Bay Cougars admittedly opened the prep football season a bit rusty. Alternately, the Capuchino Mustangs, who scored on the season’s opening kickoff, certainly hit the ground running.
In both cases, though, the two teams relied on their legs to each capture victory in their respective openers: HMB holding off Burlingame 19-10, while Cap dismantled San Mateo 35-14.
Cap rode a big night from junior speedster Isaac Nishimoto. On the season’s opening kickoff, the first play of his varsity career, Nishimoto took a kickoff 84 yards for a touchdown. Then, out of the backfield, he was a picture of consistent excellence, tabbing 17 carries for 169 yards and a touchdown, giving him two scores on the evening against San Mateo.
“He was fast coming in as a freshman (with the junior-varsity team), but I don’t think he knew how to use his speed and his quickness,” Capuchino head coach Jay Oca said. “But just all the offseason work … and working with him on his craft, he really dialed it in.”
The HMB backfield, all told, barely eclipsed Nishimoto’s individual total. The Cougars rushed for 197 yards as a team against Burlingame, paced by senior Connor Quosig’s seven carries for 80 yards. Quosig was scuffling throughout the low-scoring affair but cashed in with one explosive fourth-quarter run, a 50-yard scoring gallop, to seal the win.
In his third varsity season, Quosig is one of the mainstays of a HMB team that etched an undefeated regular season in 2019. The Cougars have long relied on a notorious system of offense, pivoting between the triple-option spread, and a jumbo package in which they cluster all 11 players as close as possible and rely on hiding the ball and plenty of brawn.
So, last Friday, while the Cougars scored the game’s first touchdown in the second quarter, and never lost the lead, things did get contentious in the fourth quarter when Burlingame scored with five minutes to go, narrowing HMB’s lead to 13-10.
“We didn’t give up or anything,” Quosig said. “We stayed confident ... and we knew we could move the ball down the field with our offense.”
Building kids into players
While Half Moon Bay is known for its gridiron lifers — Cougars head coach Keith Holden likes to detail how senior standout Tristan Hofmann was playing Pop Warner football before he started kindergarten — the Capuchino football culture isn’t quite as refined. And this is certainly true of Nishimoto.
Entering his freshman year, Nishimoto had never played football. And, as he tells it, he didn’t even want to. He was admittedly skinny, and pretty scared. But he had plenty of encouragement at home, from a father who played football in the 1990s at nearby El Camino, to a mother who encouraged him to give the sport a try.
“When he first came into the program, he was a shy kid,” Oca said. “He was new to the sport, he was a fast kid, and this sport really revealed his character and what type of person he is. What a hard-working, excellent, God-fearing young man. He’s an awesome kid, and he works his butt off. He’s respectful and very coachable.”
Oca, in his third year running the program at Cap, arrived the same time Nishimoto did. That 2018 season turned out to be a numbers game for Oca, who had to rely on turning uniformed bodies into football players simply to field a team.
“There’s a good number of kids that have some football background … but for the most part, a lot of the kids haven’t played a lot of football,” Oca said. “So, it’s really a matter of trying to change the culture.”
Nishimoto has emerged with Oca’s success in this respect. As a freshman with the JV team in 2018, Nishimoto didn’t play regularly. But midway through his sophomore year, he came into his own with a single-game performance that made Oca realize the young upstart talent had turned a corner.
“He killed it,” Oca said. “He had a bunch of plays inside, running for 30- and 40-yard runs. And, I said: ‘This kid is confident.’ He came to the school just kind of young, and after that he just became so confident in himself, and he brought that to the varsity level. He’s a hard-working kid.”
The junior was brimming with confidence after his touchdown score on the opening kickoff at San Mateo, so much so he was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for an over-exuberant end zone celebration. When the dust settled, though, and Cap was standing victorious on the postgame field, Nishimoto was back to the down-to-earth kid Oca met two years ago — albeit with one discernable difference — sans the shyness.
“I got in a little bit of trouble myself, I’m not going to lie,” Nishimoto said. “But you’ve got to learn from it. That’s what we did.”
Playing the game, not the stat sheet
While Nishimoto filled up the stat sheet against San Mateo, Half Moon Bay went about its business in a different manner against Burlingame.
The Cougars had modest performances from a three-headed backfield beast of Quosig, Hofmann and quarterback Will Moffitt. While Hofmann dominated on defense — the linebacker racked up 17 tackles, including four tackles for a loss — he grinded on offense with 14 carries for 64 yards. Moffitt optioned his way to 10 carries for 63 yards.
But HMB saved its best exploits for crunch time. In the fourth quarter, on the heels of Burlingame’s score to draw to within 3 points, the Cougars quickly found themselves up against it. With four minutes to go, HMB faced a third-and-5 situation from its own 34-yard line. That’s when Hofmann turned a potential loss into a pivotal gain, taking a draw play through the middle, breaking a tackle just behind the line of scrimmage, then muscling for a 6-yard pickup and a first down.
Two plays later, with the ball spotted smack dab in the middle of the Half Moon Bay logo at midfield, Quosig salvaged his night big time. The Cougars left-side line of guard Carlos Ruiz, tackle Adrian Alvarez and tight end Jack Furr, along with a crucial block from Hofmann, delivered the daylight Quosig need to break free.
“The big thing is the guys up front took care of it … and that just makes a hole for him,” Holden said. “And he’s hard to find in that style of offense.”
And Quosig, who had a similar opportunity earlier in the game, only to get tripped up at the line of scrimmage, made the most of his second chance by high-stepping his way to the clinching score.
“I made sure when I got the opportunity again to make sure I did something with it,” Quosig said.
