Illinois Tech Esports Finishes Top 5 in CSL Fortnite Championships
Over Fall 2019, over 300 collegiate teams played in the Fortnite Collegiate StarLeague (CSL). On January 25th, Illinois Tech’s duo of Amir Baker (Undergrad CPE, 2020) & Ray Capinpin (Undergrad CPE, 2023) placed 5th place in the Collegiate StarLeague Fortnite Championship.
Saturday’s competition was preceded by the group qualifiers, where schools across North America competed in a round-robin format throughout the fall. Facing opponents by creating a 4man squad group and racing to score the highest number of points based on the length of survival as well as the number of kills each team achieved.
Illinois Tech fielded two teams this academic year, but only Baker/Capinpin were able to qualify past the group stage. A setback in December from an initial effort of hosting the finals led to the tournament being rescheduled in January, this time around with direct assistance from Epic Games - the developers of the multi-billion dollar game.
On the day of the final, the competition had narrowed to 49 teams competing for a $25,000 prize pool, with the top team walking with $10,000. The final was comprised of four games with all 49 teams playing in the same map/lobby. Cumulative scores were determined based on the length of each duo's survival (placement) and the number of kills each team finished with.
Illinois Tech finished at 5th place with 28 points, while University of Illinois Urbana Champaign won the top prize with 32 points.
Statement from Amir Baker - Captain for the team: “We were pretty confident going into finals as we finished 1st in our conference out of 33 teams. My partner and I started off rough dying to grenade and RPG spam in the first game earning no points. In game 2, we were able to work our way up to 3rd place earning 14 points. After looting up in game 3, Raylapse got sniped in the head causing us to get rushed while he was knocked earning us no points again. We were now in 8th place going into game 4 but we remained positive that we could win it all as we were only 10 points down from 1st place. The game came down to a 1v1 between Ray and the winning team to earn a Victory Royale. Unfortunately, Ray had run out of materials and was unable to secure the Victory Royale that would have won us the 1st place spot in the tournament. We hope to take 1st place in Collegiate Starleague this semester.
The top 10 schools are listed below courtesy of CSL.
While there has been no official announcement of a spring Fortnite league by CSL yet, ITE will continue to look for opportunities for Fortnite and all our esport titles.
