SallyDesu- The Life of an eSports Organizer!

Boring story, bottom line is I'M NOT A GIRL

It all started in 2009, I was in my freshman year at Dalhousie University going into Engineering. I honestly had no intention of becoming involved with student societies or anything, but my friend told me about a student society at Dalhousie for gamers. I looked into it and met Evan, the then President of the Dalhousie eSports Society. Back then it was an extremely small society of around five people and as a society they had not grown much. Evan was more into Team Fortress 2 and CS:S, and as there was never a Collegiate eSports scenes for those games, there wasn't really much opportunity to actually do something with the society. Evan heard about the Collegiate StarLeague, an online competitive Starcraft league for universities and colleges across North America started back in 2008. Knowing that I was into Starcraft, Evan asked me if I would be interested in organizing a Dalhousie Starcraft team to participate in this. I was skeptical, I didn't know how much work I would have to put into this, or how big of a deal it was or could turn into. I decided, why not, let's see what happens.

Through the society's small existing network of people, I was able to barely round up 5 Starcraft players, who were probably some of the best FASTEST map players you'd have ever seen (lolol). None of us had ever heard about ICCUP or bothered to even try watching a Korean SC match. Going into the CSL was pretty funny, playing against other universities with high level ICCUP players. Our first season was devastating, finishing at the bottom of our division. So after that huge fail, why didn't I give up and stop organizing it? Well, it was fun. Meeting up with these guys from time to time in computer labs to play (sometimes even during some guy's shitty programming class), submitting lineups every week, meeting up and playing on library computers for CSL matches and getting scowled by students passing by looking for a PC to do their homework on, getting kicked out of the library by staff during our actual matches, etc... Eventually we sat down and started practicing on ICCUP, I went from playing Fastest map to a C- player, a few other guys got up there too, and we recruited a Korean who was an ex-B player. Still lost every CSL match though. That original team became great friends, and until today we still meet up and talk time to time, reminiscing about those early days. This friendship and community that we were slowly growing, along with the ability to represent our school playing our favorite game, drove me to keep organizing the team, and to think of new ways for us to become bigger and accomplish even greater things.

By the end of my freshman year, Evan made me an Executive of the society, meaning I would have more responsibilities and would be able to actually make use of things around campus like room bookings. When I came back in second year, he introduced me to Yazeed, the Founder of Frag For Cancer, a team of incredible volunteers who aim to raise awareness, funds, and philanthropy for various charities with gaming tournaments and events. They asked me if I would be interested in organizing a Starcraft 2 tournament for the event. I was ecstatic. Not only would I be able to organize the first ever SC2 tournament on campus, but it would be for an amazing cause as well! About 65 SC2 players showed up at the event to compete (which was huge compared to our 15 people in DeSS). I managed to get third place, and it was one of the most amazing experiences I had ever gone through. I never thought I would ever be on a stage playing my favorite game, with an audience watching me to cheer me on, and ultimately cheer for the other guy when I lost to an MM rush blowing up my backdoor rocks D:. I got to experience an event like this both as a player and an organizer. Seeing an event like FFC come together, to see so many people gather together for the shared interest in a game like Starcraft, to see rows of PCs screaming because their eSports levels were over 9000, was just amazing. From there on I decided, eSports is incredible, it's growing here at my university and in North America, and I want to keep organizing things for eSports to see it grow into something huge.

After FFC, DeSS had a huge growth spurt. We gathered another 20-30 new members from Dalhousie who played. Evan graduated, so I took on the role as President of the society. Back then there was no Masters division, and we were FULL of Diamonds, many guys in the high ranks. All of a sudden we went from having no members, to having a bunch of members who were actually good at the game. Our CSL career took a turn in the complete opposite direction. We were winning week after week becoming an unstoppable school. We started having weekly scheduled meetings in a beastly computer lab on campus, started streaming all of our matches, even started having our own small tournaments. In our first CSL week we had to play against SUGGY (a semi-pro player), and I have to say we were terrified considering our competitive experience to date. But one of our new guys, Muffin, took him out twice with an amazing MM rush, known as the 'muffin rax' (3-4 proxied rax), and epic banshee harass from 5 different places at once. During those matches, just watching the stream chat explode gave me a chill. The community we were growing was becoming something amazing, we were becoming an actual team of players who love the game and share team/school pride. From then on we took it pretty seriously, beating QXC, making it to CSL playoffs last year and this year finishing as the 3rd highest school ranked by elo in all of NA. We went from an initial 5 members to over 165 in 2 years! We even started Halifax BarCraft, currently the only BarCraft in all of Atlantic Canada, and that is growing pretty fast as well. The progression we've made as a team, community, and society was tremendous, and now we are easily the largest and most active student society at Dalhousie University.

With Dalhousie's growing success and CSL's continuous growth (reaching about 200 active schools last year and launching an amazing new website), I decided I wanted to help out more with CSL as well. They put out a call for some Match Assistance admins, and I figured, hey why not, lets try it out. So I did, and during the times where I would sit in a channel in game helping moderate games, I would talk a little bit to people like Peter (crescentia) or Mark (darththienan). Eventually after we became friends, I decided to ask just for fun, would I make a good CSL admin? From there I met Mona (hazelynut) and Duran (Xeris), who started my CSL admin experience letting me organize events like the Thundertoss CSL tournament, Spencerick Cup, etc. These guys are fantastic to work with, a fun and friendly staff of people who do what they do because of their love for the game. Eventually, as League of Legends was growing more in the eSports scene, we decided it would be a great idea to have CSL expand to LoL. But we needed someone to take charge of it and generate an entire new staff out of thin air, similar to the caliber of the existing CSL SC2 staff. I volunteered to take on this role, and I have to say, the staff that we have made for CSL LoL by today is simply outstanding. CSL LoL has grown so much since September when it was started, and it's just amazing to see something grow so much over such a short period of time. Playoffs are coming up soon for both CSL SC2 and LoL, so definitely tune into those and see if you can attend the playoff LAN!

Well, we've changed the name to Frag For Charity to open it up to new possibilities and more special events. We picked up an amazing sponsor, Bell Aliant, who's been helping us out tremendously with our events this year. Over the past five years we've managed to raise $50,000 for various charities with local LANs and online tournaments, raising $25,000 in this year alone! You may have tuned into Frag For Mental Health in February, that was an incredible event, getting up to 8000 viewers, raising $15k, and making $7500 of that from donations alone! It was incredible seeing FFC grow into something as huge as it is today, I'm sure it will continue to grow and I hope I can continue to be a part of it.

Over these past two years I've met some amazing people in eSports, working with other amazing organizers, hilarious casters (<3 Phrank/RAP1D/LAGTV/etc). Parents and other students who don't understand eSports often criticize me for what I do, and it's really frustrating to be so passionate about something and have people make fun of you. But at the end of the day, I'm doing all of this because I love doing it, I love the games, I love the community, and I love seeing events and causes come together. I want to do everything I can to improve the eSports scene in the world, starting with my University and the rest of NA. If MLG ever decides to come back to Canada, I want to help make it happen. My dream is that one day, no one will ever give you weird looks when you say you play SC2 for a team or professionally. When 'eSports' has the same impact as saying 'sports'. Let's do it!

If you want to start something:

Honestly your first best bet would be to look at your local universities. CSL has grown to about 300 active Universities in North America, it's very likely that there is a student SC2 team in your area. University societies usually have access to grants and funding from the school, which is ultimately everything you need to host and organize events. Once you have the necessary funding, it's all up to you to do what you need to do.

If you want to contribute to existing community/make it bigger and better

You need to try to become good friends with the organizing team and follow through with the things you say you'll do. I've worked with alot of people in the past who say 'yeah I can do that' and then never follow through, it's the worst thing, especially if they still show up to meetings after not doing anything. To make community bigger/better you need to put a ton of effort into promotion and quality of the events/meetings you do. Better events and more members mean better sponsorships, which comes back around again to making better events and bringing more people in. Just always think of every way you could possibly make an event amazing, or ways you can promote your community and impress/involve members. The constant brainstorming usually doesn't leave much room for MIAs or fails. Also make an effort to introduce yourself to everyone at events you organize, don't be an obnoxious 'look at what I can do, this event is soh good' type, just be friendly, joke around about the game, etc!

My bros at FFC

Yazeed, Mike, Ian, etc, you guys are so much fun to work with. At the end of the day, despite all the headaches and bickering we might have to deal with, we always end up organizing amazing events. The amount FFC has grown in the past few years, and the amount that we have grown as a team, is simply phenomenal. Can't wait to see what the future has in store for FFC, and maybe you guys will learn how to pick up your phone/answer text/reply to email/not bail on celebratory wing nights sometime soon <3

My bros at DeSS

To Ben, Eric, all members of DeSS and supporters. You guys are amazing. We've grown so much as a society over the past few years, but it was always a team effort. Nothing that we have accomplished could have been possible without all of your help and support. Despite all the memes and troll posts you guys post on the Facebook group, I still love you. Lets own CSL Playoffs and tear the place down for the next BarCraft.

My bros at CSL

Soh funny. It's amazing how much our leagues have grown over the past few years. The staff for SC2 and LoL are just so much fun to work with. We've really created an awesome place for schools to play, even for high schools and now universities in EU. I'm confident we can make the collegiate eSports scene huge all over the world one day. Les do eet!

My bros at z33k

Max, Lane, goldfish, and the rest of the z33k staff, you guys are so helpful whenever I need help with the site and tournaments that I'm running. So approachable and friendly, thanks so much for all the help in the past. Looking forward to future events with you

Jarett Cale

7 years ago, I never thought that I would be casting with or even talking casually to my childhood idol for hours on end. You're so much fun to talk to, and it's awesome that you love the SC2 scene so much. People still love you, and I hope you can get hooked up with some good internet so 1 million gamers can say their life is complete once you start streaming! Still waiting for you to say even just one sentence as Jeremy live, and to watch it instantly front page on Reddit, TL, and get a million views on Youtube in a day. Hope we can work together more in the future!

LAGTV

You guys are hilarious! When you guys came to the FFC Lan in September 2011 and casted When Cheese Fails live for everyone there, it was marvelous. When you guys started casting you brought like half of the auditorium over to you guys. I hate how people misjudge you guys, thinking you're incapable of casting the more competitive games. You're one of the most entertaining casting duos I've seen, and amazing guys irl. Adam you are the god of stream settings, I really appreciate you sitting down with me for so long to help sort out the stuff for the Frag For Mental Health stream. I'm sorry I stole pics off your Facebook and posted them on stream chat for everyone lololol. It was amazing how much work you guys put into FFMH, how much donations you guys raised for the cause, and how much you tore down the house with your awesome casting. Congrats again to Jeff for getting into Check Six, goin on top Masters to GM! Gogo LAGTV!

Team GoSu

ostojiy imba
dde pro @ computer parts
GO HOME KYHOL

PeNguiN

Always will be Rank 1 GM in my books, keep carrying Dal bro!