As we enter week three of our Student Athlete Behind the Screen Story Series, the focus will be on the game of Valorant (PC) and our featured Esports Student Athlete will be the East Coast Conference (ECC) Fall 2020 Valorant champion, Hadi Daoud. Hadi, an international student, is originally from the country of Jordan, who decided to follow in his brothers footsteps whom also came to CSI. He is currently a sophomore studying Computer Science and known on Discord as, !Xero. Hadi has been a gamer for as long as he can remember stating, "… (even) from that era I was super competitive, me and my bothers would always see who can beat who all the time; fast forward to the newer games, (with) First-person shooters (FPS) with strategies, I just picked up on it and I was ready to compete." Hadi also played Overwatch in various leagues competitively before joining CSI's Esports Valorant team in his first year at CSI.
 
In that first year, Hadi and his teammates had an undefeated season to win the Fall 2020 ECC Esports Valorant championship. In the next semester (Spring 2021), they were 8-0 entering the championship game for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), unfortunately, there first loss came on that day, however, that does not take away the historic year they had. Overall, they were 18-1 as a team with a near dual championship in two separate conferences. Just fascinating for a bunch of students who did not know each other until a week or so before it all began. Hadi added, "we had cool energy (from the start) and we understood each other well."
 
The game of Valorant itself is a 5v5 first-person shooter (FPS) game with a number of characters, in this case called agents, who each have their own unique abilities while one team is on the attack the other is on the defense and vice versa until one team reaches 13 rounds points to win that round. Hadi described the gameplay to that of something we all as kids (in-person) have done at least once in our life, he said, "Basically it's a game of police and thieves, you want to catch the thieves as the police before the timer runs out or before they do the bad thing they want to do." In this case, the bad thing is planting the spike (a bomb) to go off. When asked, how do the maps (the setting of the game) come into play, Hadi stated, "there (is) currently 5 maps in Valorant… different maps have different layouts, angles, atmospheres, some maps have 3 sites you can plant the spike (bomb) in, some only 2 sites…also different agents work better on different maps. This goes all together with the planning (of) the opposition." The start of the game is similar to that of American Football's coin toss, where the winner of the coin toss, picks to defend or receive first. The same goes for Valorant where one team chooses a map to start and the other team choose which side (offense or defense) of the map to start on, and after each point, they switch.
 
Upon first seeing that Esports was coming to CSI, Hadi's initial thought process was, "(it's) great, now we can get some coverage on the games that we love, (in the) the Esports community." However, he also added, "I see that people still under estimate, still do not acknowledge the effort, or the stress that we have during the game…sometimes we have to sit for 5-6 hours to practice a single defensive plan (strategy) between all five  of us (teammates)."  Despite this, Hadi does also see more and more people opening up to Esports and respecting the demand that goes behind competing behind a screen while communicating through headsets to accomplish the same goal in any sport, and that is to win.
 
When asked about his experience during the season, Hadi said that it was amazing being on a team where they meshed so well, while winning nearly every match they played, and losing only a handful of total rounds. As we continued, he described how they would prepare for upcoming opponents each week, adding, "…we (would) go to their twitch videos, we (would) look at their profiles for which agents they play (with), what maps (they) prefer, do they play slow or fast, do they like to rush in or stay back. A lot of stuff goes into planning (for the next match) when playing against a specific team." His description alone can resonate with any student athlete on any traditional sports teams in terms of preparation.
 
Getting into the stigmatism of Esports not being considered a "real" sport, Hadi had this to say for the naysayers, "…try to understand the game more, the passion behind the players, at the end of the line, it's not a physical sport, it's a mental sport." Hadi would go on to discuss the mental fortitude it takes sitting for hours, making split-second decisions in a continues fashion and how their hand-eye coordination has to be top notch at all times. He would add a comparison to traditional sports in game, "just like regular sports have captains and timeouts, we have those too to talk about strategies; everything is the same thing expect the physical aspect (in most cases).
 
When asked if he considers himself to be an "athlete" or "gamer", Hadi was hesitant but said both, adding, "I think it's a (the) stigma around the word "athlete" behind the physical construct or aspect of a person's ability to play the game. The age gap between Esports pro players and (traditional sports) is different. (Most) can play traditional sports up until 40 (years old) but in Esports by age 30 most retire because your response time goes down in your hand as you get older so the hand-eye coordination doesn't matter as much compared to the response time happening in front of you." Personally, I found this to be very interesting, mainly because, like many others, I figured Esports athletes can play in their late 30s or more like golfers since it does not require much physical fortitude. When you think about it, Football has one of the lowest pro-life playing careers because of the amount of physical punishment your body can take, well, with Esports athletes their mental fortitude is on overdrive every second of every match, which is why their pro-life playing careers are shorter than you think.
 
Finally, gaming and Esports aside, Hadi, like many other Esports athletes does other things, he loves playing and watching soccer, he even was into basketball and body building in his earlier years. Hadi entered CSI during COVID and unfortunately was not able to get involved with much else, but for him competing in Esports was his go to outside of the classroom. I want to thank Hadi for time during the interview; we cannot wait to see him and his teammates in action again in the Fall.
 
Week four will feature the game of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (SSBU) and our featured student athlete will be Sofronio Lorenzo be sure to check it out!