Ex-pro coach comes to collegiate OW

The

former OWL coach comes

to UTD to pursue an MBA and collegiate Overwatch success

Coach check-in: Danielle Kcholi

Comet cross-country teams are coming out of the gates hot, looking to improve this year

TYLER BURKHARDT Editor-in-Chief

In the third Coach Check-in, I sat down with cross country coach Danielle Kcholi to talk about the Comets’ hot start to the semester, their season aspirations, and the new cross country regional alignment.

From college to the Overwatch League and back again, UTD’s new head Overwatch coach has proven he can compete professionally while also furthering his education and the Overwatch team’s experience.

Christopher “Bani” Benell, MBA student and new head coach of the Overwatch team, is the former Washington Justice coach and a previous Houston Outlaws support player. After his time as the Justice coach, he said he wanted to work on an MBA and that UTD had come up as a good option.

“I became interested in the business side of esports, so I decided that I wanted to get some hard skills. And the MBA program was the way to go, essentially, for me,” Bani said. “I landed on a couple of options, and UT Dallas was one of them – just because they had a great esports program. And I still wanted to keep my foot in Overwatch and esports in general while pursuing my MBA, so I reached out to Greg and we kind of talked back and forth. … So, yeah, I ended up going with UT Dallas.”

Bani graduated in 2017 from Carleton University with an undergraduate degree in neuroscience and mental health. When Overwatch was released in 2016, however, he made it his goal to go pro in the competitive team shooter.

“I was addicted,” Bani said. “Like, I played it nonstop. At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, I realized I’m going to go pro in this, like, that’s gonna be my goal for the next little while at least. And it just so happened that while I was finishing my degree, I had the opportunity spring up, and I took it.”

After this, Bani would play for the Outlaws as their main support. After some time competing, including a top 8 regular season finish with the team, he shifted into the coaching role, saying that he felt it was a natural transition considering his strategic playstyle.

“Season two, we had some struggles, and they wanted to revamp the roster,” Bani said. “So, I was looking at my options and whether I wanted to play or move into coaching. I already knew that… I approached the game in a kind of analytical way already, like, you know, a strategic way. So, while I was on the Outlaws, I would basically be the in-game leader and kind of give the idea of what we’re doing. And so that transitions pretty well to coaching where you approach the game in that kind of conceptual way, and you try and teach those concepts to your players.”

Many other pro players try to stay in the esports scene via coaching or by leveraging their brand into making a streaming career. While players and personalities like Seagull, Doublelift and Ludwig have cultivated successful streaming careers and brands, many more are never seen in the spotlight again, and the option of going to school is becoming increasingly laden with incentive. Bani says that whether going for a bachelor’s or graduate degree, the potential that comes out of going to a good university with a good esports program is growing.

“There’s a lot of universities that are picking up esports,” Bani said, “For example, UTD. We don’t necessarily have any, you know, top-tier sports or traditional sports teams, but our esports program … we’ve got four of the best teams in the country. And the overhead is much less than if you were to try and have a, you know, multi-billion-dollar football team or something like that. It’s gonna grow as a potential option for the path to pro. Just like the more these colleges start offering scholarships and even full rides for students, I think there are a lot of people out there who want to have a backup plan. And that’s

I peeked at the standings, but tell me a little bit about how the season is going so far? We had a really good start. With cross country, this is the time of the year when you want to be easing into things and getting races out of the way as workouts, stuff like that. So, it’s still really exciting to see those results and see them running this fast this early in the season. That’s a nice surprise. But, we’re aiming for those championship meets—regionals and conference, for us—so these early ones are good to focus on racing as a team, not worry too much about what’s happening around us.

Has the buildup for the season been impacted by last year’s awkward schedule?

Honestly no, not necessarily. It was a weird cross country season, but we still had a full track season after that, and all of our runners do both. We got to train and have usual competition during the spring under that schedule. So out of all the fall sports on campus, we got the best out of last year.

Speaking of—both teams did well, especially the men’s team, who won their third consecutive title last year. What’s the outlook for this season?

Our mens team’s goals have really evolved, especially over the past couple of years. Before, it was win conference. And, that’s always been in our minds, but now it’s a bit more attainable, and we’re working on doing something at the regional level, and from there, going to nationals in the next few years. It’s really cool to see how the team has evolved in a really short period of time, and that’s the goal: to elevate everything; the conference, elevate to the point where we’re competing at the national level with all of the DIIIs, etc. For our women’s team, the whole losing by one point thing at conference last year was frustrating, but the goal is to be better than we were last year. We’ve got a good, solid core, and a great freshman class coming in, so if it can all come together, I think we’ve got a good chance to really do something on the conference level.

Can you speak to structure of those competitions this year?

So, they actually just realigned our regions this year in part of a 10-region realignment for cross country. We’re in the West region now, one of the strongest regions—one of the schools in our division actually won nationals in 2019—and the way to qualify for nationals is either winning your region, or collecting at-large bids from out-ofregion competition. It actually works out kind of well for us, though, that we can now drive 5 hours, go to Memphis, and get out-of-region competition with a good team who run a great meet we’ve attended in the past. Same thing when we go to Chili Pepper, in Fayetteville, which isn’t as much of a DIII meet, but we’ll see some of our competition there, although we do plan on going to a meet in Kentucky instead in the future.

And, I saw that Comets won both the men and women’s runners of the week for the conference. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah, so they do runners of the week for ASC, and that’s the whole conference.

SEE CROSS-COUNTRY, PAGE 8

Today’s Best of 5 is an Overwatch filled edition, mixed in the return of Comet Clash and a top level collegiate play. The last two weeks have marked a return to collegiate esports for collegiate Overwatch, for better or for worse depending on the tournament organizer.

HUE Invitational 2021!

Overwatch Team comes bursting out of the gate at UGC

If you follow me on twitter (@Jazzy_reporter), then you’ll know that I’ve been ready for the performance of UTD’s Overwatch team for a very long time. With the addition of Bani as head coach, and a stacked roster aside, this is one of the best Overwatch rosters UTD has ever had, and they came out of the gate swinging. In the first tournament of the semester, UTD ran through the bracket, only being stopped by Northwood Esports in the finals, one of the best teams in the nation. You can tune in to the team’s matches when they go live on Mondays for the NACE Starleague, and keep an eye out for when UGC matches are announced.

Comet Clash is back! Maybe once I write enough columns, a drinking game could be made off how many times I’ve used the “X thing is back” format. But it’s genuinely exciting to see the return of Comet Clash to the weekly Smash tournament lineup, since it provides another good opportunity to compete without having to make a big drive or pay a venue fee. It’s hosted in the Student Union right now due to complications with using the Blackstone Launchpad, but that’s still ridiculously easy for Comets to attend on Sunday evenings. With a location that’s right at home and an entry fee combined of $3 to play in the singles bracket, there isn’t a better chance to fight for glory against some of the best players in the DFW area.

The HUE Invitiational just happened last weekend, but unfortunately due to production timing I’ll be writing this column before it actually happens. Once again, UTD OW should’ve been there (Curse COVID-19!!!) but instead I’ll have to actually make bracket predictions that aren’t UTD winning everything. I’ll make the minorly safe bets that Maryville wins the League of Legends tournament and Northwood wins the Overwatch tournament, but you, the reader, can check the bracket and laugh at how silly past me was to predict such a thing. But, if you didn’t watch the matches, it’s most likely the most competitive collegiate gameplay of recent memory, so I highly recommend going back to watch the VODS.

The Overwatch collegiate schedule gets announced, and blasted Blizzard announced a brand new schedule for collegiate competition, and the uproar was loud and immediate. Especially for West Coast schools, many matches were scheduled during common class times, seemingly forcing the “rock and a hard place” decision between playing official matches and going to school (y’know, the reason that students are enrolled in college.) While the schedule was since mildly adjusted to benefit the most affected schools, it still remains that there will be some tough decisions to make and workarounds figured out for schools to participate. Compounded with additional leagues and tournaments operating on the weekends and during the week as well, and it seems that collegiate competition is getting kneecapped by the biggest enemy of all – Time.

Dallas Fuel Playoffs Watch Party is 21+ only

Oh boy, the Overwatch League Playoffs are this week! Not only that, but Dallas Fuel is hosting a watch party at Northside Drafthouse, right in our backyard! Lemme just go and buy the tickets and … what?

The watch party is being hosted next door to a university full of undergraduates under 21, and only fans 21 and old are allowed entry? To quote the former president, this is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever. Why can’t most of the undergraduate population go to the party? Why host it here when it’s right next to the university? I can’t even go to this watch party! While at time of writing I haven’t got a response from Dallas Fuel regarding the policy, I’m greatly saddened by the inability to go to a bar that on any other night I could walk into. How many retweets to be allowed inside the watch party social media manager?

WARNER BROS. | COURTESY