By Lexie Shezifi — Reporter
San Jose State’s Fortnite team placed 28th in the PlayVS College Fall 2020 Fortnite Championship finals match over the weekend, taking home $1,000 in scholarship prize money.
The team, composed of SJSU seniors Daniel Candelas, Ruben Manriquez and Robert Collins, made it to the finals after 10 weeks of matches against 300 other universities across the nation.
The tournament was sponsored by Fortnite in partnership with PlayVS, which hosts collegiate esports events across the country.
Team captain Candelas said he expected his team to make it far into the tournament based on his experience with competitive Fortnite.
“I’ve made it to grand finals, which is basically the top 48 duos in the West Coast servers and just the fact that I have had a lot of experience with the competitive side of Fortnite,” Candelas said.
The tournament consisted of teams of three that faced off against each other in matches each week and points were accumulated along the way.
Points were awarded based on wins and placements and were totaled up to determine the teams that would compete in the finals.
For the playoffs, the top 66 teams with the most points accumulated played each other in two different brackets with 33 in one and 33 in the other.
The top 16 teams from each bracket made it to the finals match this weekend where SJSU placed 28th and took home the guaranteed $1,000 in scholarship prizing.
Candelas said he thought his team could have placed higher in the finals match, but was held back due to connection issues.
“It was really hard for us because we were playing on East Coast servers and there were only two or three West Coast teams in the finals,” Candelas said. “It was super hard to compete on their ping, I one hundred percent believe that we would have done a lot better if we had better ping.”
Candelas said that when he transferred to SJSU and found out about the Esports Club, he reached out and wanted to make Fortnite a bigger part of it.
“I always played competitively and I found out we had an Esports Club and I reached out and took over the team kind of,” he said. “I just let them know my history and I took the initiative to want to do more for the Fortnite team at SJSU.”
Candelas said that he’s looking ahead to next semester when he plans to compete in a solo tournament and is considering playing in another trios tournament with his team.
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