By Hayden Speace
Roster turnover is nothing new in college sports, and for the University of Maryland’s Terps Esports League of Legends Premier team, this semester was no different.
Roster turnover is the rate at which sports players leave and are replaced by their teams. The Premier team competes in PlayVS, a collegiate esports league, with matches every Monday at 7 p.m., streamed live on the organization’s Twitch.
The team practices two to three times a week, has a dedicated coach and already locked up a playoff spot this season — signs that competitive gaming at UMD has grown into something more than just a casual hobby.
But having the structure in place does not automatically mean the roster stays intact. This semester, it did not.
The rebuild began with Dahan Kim, the coach of the Premier team. Maximilian Shen, a first-year electrical and computer engineering doctoral student who has been with the program since the beginning, said Kim is thinking about stepping down after this year and wants to go out on a high note. At the beginning of the semester, Kim reached out to former players to bring more experience back to the roster.
“He tried to get our original top laner and mid laner back because they play the game a lot more; they’re older, they have more experience,” Shen said. “He wanted this semester to be special.”
A top laner plays in an isolated side lane focused on durable tanks and one on one duels. Mid laners, by contrast, sit at the center lane and play characters like mages or assassins to focus on wave control and roaming the map.
The mid laner, Henry Zhang, whose gamertag is Zero Domain, returned to the team. However, the original top laner did not. Shen said burnout and schoolwork kept him away, so the team brought in Jason Petersen, a senior psychology major, to take his place.
“I was told I was the top laner now,” Petersen said. “I still, to this point, don’t know the full backstory. It kind of came out of nowhere.”
Dennis Hong, a junior mechanical engineering major whose gamertag is Pika, also stepped up in a recent match after spending time on the academy team, the program’s JV squad.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been playing at this high a level,” Hong said. “It’s pretty nerve-wracking, but exciting to be back.”
The changes to the roster tested more than just individual skill. In League of Legends, a five-on-five strategy game where teams battle across a map to destroy each other’s base, communication is everything. When new players come in, the team essentially must relearn how to communicate with each other.
“You have to get used to new people and start the process all over again of finding a way to communicate with your teammates properly,” Shen said. “League has so many moving pieces all over the map. It’s really important.”
Shen has witnessed it almost every semester: The players who stick around just get better at adapting.
This kind of turnover is something traditional college sports programs have dealt with since the beginning. What is different now is that collegiate esports, like the Terps Premier team, has the infrastructure to match organized national leagues, with real coaching staff and competitive pipelines that send the best teams to championship events.
The program has seen its ups and downs. One semester, the team made it to the finals of the East Coast Conference Tier Two. The ECC esports league is an NCAA Division II athletics conference that operates a structured esports circuit. Last semester, they ended the season with an early playoff exit. This year, they are back in the postseason, with a redesigned roster motivated to make a deeper run.
“I’m hopeful to get past the first round,” Shen said. “Going really deep; I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Maybe if we commit more time and figure it out.”
Peterson is not worried about any of that.
“I am technically undefeated in the collegiate league,” he said. “We will never lose.”
Featured Image: The third floor of Knight Hall on April 27, which houses the Terps Esports Broadcast Team. Photo by Hayden Speace.