Auburn, ME – Mustangs Esports kicked off the opening week of the second semester with the Call of Duty team taking a pair of victories in College COD. The competition is one of three the team will play in this semester, along with its ECAC league and College XP tournaments.
College COD functions as a league with two matches played every Monday night. The regular season is split into two halves. First, each team plays half the schools in their division through five weeks. In the second half of the campaign, the top teams from each regional division are grouped together for the final five weeks of the regular season. After that, teams that qualify participate in the postseason to crown a champion.
The Mustangs, in the Atlantic Division of the Northeast region, began their campaign against Brookdale Community College and Fisher College.
Brookdale Community College, 3-0 Win
Esports made short work of their first opponent, completing a swift sweep of the Brookdale Jersey Blues.
The Mustangs new-look COD lineup saw the collegiate debut of Idelmaro "Delo" Andrade, a Hamden, CT native who qualified for Stage 1 Elite in the Challenger's League and plays on the 14th ranked amateur team in the country, before being recruited to CMCC. The squad also added Ihzayah "Zay" Marcellus, a transfer from Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina, to compliment their returning players from the first semester, Ethan "EthanCOD" Deneau and Caden "Asylum" Bedney.
Map #1 was hardpoint on Skyline. The Mustangs wrapped it up quickly with a 250-30 win in just 6:30. Skyline was also the site for round two, search and destroy. CMCC took it 6-1 to take a commanding lead and finished off the sweep on map #3 Vault control. In total, it took Mustangs Esports just 14:55 of game time to win their first match of the College COD season.
Fisher Falcons, 3-2 Win
In their second match of the night, the Mustangs faced the Fisher Falcons. This is the second team of Fisher College esports, though it still has three former professional Call of Duty players and a collegiate national champion on it. It was a big match-up for Central Maine going up against a roster that was consensus top five ranking before the season began.
Mustangs started the fastest, going up 2-0 on Vault for hardpoint, 250-177 and search and destroy on Skyline, 6-2. Delo and Zay both had great showings in hardpoint going 37/30 and 38/25 respectively.
The Falcons bounced back and threatened a reverse sweep after taking control on Vault 3-0 and hardpoint on Hacienda 250-171.
That set up a winner-take-all fifth map, playing search and destroy on Vault. The Mustangs took it 6-3 to win the match 3-2 and start off the College COD season with a 2-0 record.
"I knew this team was talented, but I think we were overlooked a little bit being a Community College in Maine," said Esports Coordinator Andrew Garza. "I don't think some people would have expected us to be able to compete with some of the top D1 and D2 schools in the country. We're showing them that we can."
CMCC is now ranked #10 in the country in the latest College COD top 25 poll, one spot behind Fisher.
View the match here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnUrceJ-zXU
