What could be more exciting than sitting next to four other teammates, discussing drafting strategies and fighting alongside each other in the Summoner’s Rift? If there is anything more fun than playing with five friends, it would be to play against another five familiar players, who work together to fight for the glory of the class with wit, speed, skills, and collaboration.
Even before the League of Legends tournament became an official event for Webb Day, Webb gamers across all classes had engaged in fierce annual scrimmages and competitions against each other back on campus. The Webb Day event brought the tradition to a higher stature, as it allowed more players to get together under the pandemic.
“I always enjoy playing the intense game, but it really is the people who make it special,” said Jimmy Feng (‘21). “I missed playing with Webb people and chatting with them, and playing in the game reignited these familiar emotions. It was just a very emotional moment for me. I used to play with Alex, Yiyi, and other seniors throughout my freshmen, sophomore, and junior year, and having the opportunity to play with them again before graduation was awesome.”
On the evening of March 20th, about 20 gamers gathered on Zoom and engaged in an intense competition that determined the best League of Legends team at Webb. The freshmen and sophomores teamed up together as the underclassmen team, while the juniors and seniors each had a team of five players, all ready to conquer the Summoner’s Rift.
In the first game, the underclassmen team challenged the senior team in a BO1 (best of one). During the drafting process—, the arguably most thrilling and underestimated part of the game—, the senior team banned the three top lane champions while the underclassmen team focused on banning support champions. Like a game of chess itself, the drafting part of a game, which took place even before the official game—, could potentially determine the final outcome. Like in professional competitions, players from both teams sought to pick the best champions while using swing champions to confuse the opponents.
“For drafting, I just tried my best to find whoever my teammates are comfortable on and tried to make a coherent draft,” Andy Fu (‘23) said. “Because of the comfort picks, we were forced to draft a full attack damage team comp which kind of lost the game in draft.”
As Jimmy Feng (‘21) and Stuart Lin (‘22) provided an enthusiastic and professional commentary for the game beginning from the drafting process, the intensity and competitiveness of the game began to heat, and excitement permeated the Zoom room.
“I enjoyed commenting a lot, and I even think that it is more fun than playing in the actual game. I enjoyed bringing my speaking talents onto the stage and sharing my take of the game with everyone else,” Jimmy said.
Eventually, top–laner Andy Fu (‘23) chose Aatrox for top lane, jungler Jack Zhou (‘23) played Warwick, mid–laner Jordan McCray used Yasuo, Bot–laner Terrence Wu (‘23) picked Jhin, and support Jonathan Rosales-Cardenas (‘24) played using the champion, Leona. On the senior team, Cristian Rosales (‘21) played as Garen in the top lane, jungler Ryan Lin (‘21) played Graves, Yiyi Ouyang (‘21) used Zed in the mid lane, ADC Alex Xiao (‘21) played Xayah, and support Santiago Noblin (‘21) played Neeko, a champion unconventional for the support role.
After a series of team fights, the senior team dominated almost all lanes and easily ended the game. Despite the loss, the underclassmen had fun and look forward to establishing better collaboration with each other for the future tournaments to come.
“The game was quite enjoyable, albeit a bit unfair with the seniors having played the game a lot more and were generally better skilled,” Terrence said.
In the next game, the senior and junior team—long-term rivalries—faced each other again in the Summoner’s Rift in the game of 2021. This time, Jimmy played for Cristian, and Terrence and Cristian commented for the game and streamed it on Twitch. Top–laner Stuart Lin (‘22), Junger Chris Chung (‘22), mid–laner Tony Lin (‘22), ADC Jonathan Yu (‘22), and support Dylan Lange (‘22) represented the junior class, with three of them experiencing technical difficulties with 0.2 second of time lag.
“The draft process was pretty hectic since we didn’t have that many players who were local, so we were at a disadvantage from the start since two of our players were on 200 ping which is incredibly hard to deal with,” Chris said.
Despite the difficulties, the junior team managed to withhold their opponent until forty minutes into the game. After intense team fights, the senior team used the winning momentum from earlier to end the game, becoming the final winner of the League of Legends tournament of Webb Day.
With players hailing from across the world all gathered on the United States server, the event brought together an unprecedented number of gamers of the community and fostered one of the best environments for them, creating a space with laughter, competition, friendship, connections, and community cohesion.
“The game was really fun and overall a great experience,” Andy said. “It was great that we got to play against other players at our school in a semi-competitive way. Overall, I really enjoyed this opportunity to play against some other classmates especially the upperclassmen.”
“The game was fun since I was able to play with friends that I haven’t been able to play with since we all left in–person school,” Chris said.
To students, League of Legends is more than a simple Moba game to spend time; the game brings people together. With the various feelings it brings like joy, contentment, amusement, and thrill and the occasional frustration, the game connects students across servers under a time of the pandemic. It was the perfect way to end Webb Day.
“The event was definitely worth going to even though I only watched,” Emily Black (‘24) said.
Hopefully the game will become an important tradition of Webb Day, where more students across grade levels and schools will participate in the fun process that tests their tenacity, intelligence, flexibility, and ability to work as a class.
