eSports, or electronic sports, are a form of competition whereby teams and individuals compete in multiplayer video games. Northwood is proud to be associated with Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA) in this regard. The MSSA is the South African Federation for board games, card games, eSports, robotics and war-games.
On Saturday 22nd April the Northwood DOTA 2 team participated in the 2017 DOTA 2 online championships.
DOTA 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena where two teams of five battle it out for control of the gaming map and the defence of their team’s ‘ancient’ (a building in their base).
Last year, at the 6th International tournament for DOTA 2, the combined prize pool was well over 20 million dollars for those professional gamers skilled enough to participate in the tournament. Our boys are a long way from this level of gaming but have made a step in the right direction if they wish to pursue careers as professional gamers.
Under the coaches Mr Gebreab and Mr McDowall with capable leadership of Jaryd Krishna as a captain, the Northwood team (Keagan Oliphant, Daniel Knight, Bill Lie, Alvin Ke and Jaryd Krishna(C) ) did exceptionally well coming 2nd out of 9 schools taking part in the tournament. Northwood played against 5 other teams and won 4 of their fixtures.
In the first game Northwood was up against Maritzburg college and this was quite a one sided fixture in favour of Northwood. The final result 51-10.
The second game of the tournament saw Northwood going up against some very tough opposition – Sinister5. The Northwood team wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this fixture and lost 41-9 to the team that went on to win the tournament.
Northwood looked commanding at the start of their fixture against VexxedPhoenix and due to a technical issue VexxedPhoenix were disqualified.
The fourth fixture was against Jeppe High School and this was again quite a one-sided fixture in favour of Northwood with the final score being 59-16 to Northwood.
The final fixture was against Grey High School. The team was very nervous for this fixture as they had lost to Grey the day before in a warm up game. The Northwood team did not let nerves get the better of them and they managed to win the fixture.
This was the first DOTA 2 tournament that Northwood had participated in and the boys did extremely well and can be proud of their achievement.
