Spring 2026 Week One Recap
This past week was the start of Spalding Esports' Spring season. The Golden Eagles will be competing in four different titles; Apex Legends, Fortnite, EA's College Football, and Rocket League. Three of the four esports teams debuted this week, but Rocket League will have their first match next week, Tuesday February 10th at 6PM ET.
Apex Legends
The SU Esports Apex Legends dropped into their first week on Monday, February 2nd against some league leaders from the previous Fall. Despite facing challenging opponents the team consisting of;
Allie Kelsey (Senior),
Alyssa Smallwood (Sophomore), and
Malakhi Barton (Junior) had a successful debut night.
For Apex Legends each team will play six games across two different maps. In those games they placed 11th, 8th, 8th, on E-Disctrict, and 11th, 9th, and 10th on Storm Point. Additionally they added a couple eliminations to add to their point total. Malakhi finished with a stat line of 1 elim, 0 assists, and 1 knock. Alyssa led the way for the team finishing 2/1/2 on the night.
This performance brought in 13 points for the Golden Eagles. As of the time of writing ECAC has not published a public leader board to see where exactly the trio ranks among the competition.
Fortnite
After a successful fall campaign freshman duo
Andrew Bland and
Evan Orr had a historic opening night in the ECAC's Fortnite Zero Build Duos Spring opener. Each week the ZB Fortnite team will compete in three games each night earning points to qualify for the Spring Finals at the end of the semester.
Wanting to piggyback off a Finals appearance in the Fall, Andrew and Evan came out strong in their first game of the night. As the duo navigated the endgame picking up five eliminations between the two they earned the Golden Eagles their very first Victory Royale in program history. Not only did the placement earn them 65 points, but their names will live in the record books as the first duo to grab that win.
Their success continued through the next two games for the opening night placing 2nd and 5th grabbing another elimination through those two games. Andrew and Evan ended the night with 3 eliminations each. This performance earned the duo 177 points, the most earned in a single night in program history.
They are currently ranked 7th out of 148 total teams across the nation.
EA College Football 26
Freshman
Matthew Judkins made his debut as the first sports game competitor for Spalding Esports on Wednesday, February 4th against Mount Aloysius College.
The CFB league is Swiss Play so each week Matt will match up with someone of the same record and play a best of three. Each player submits three teams of which the opponent bans one, then you must get a win with each of your remaining teams to be declared the winner.
Matt started out the night strong putting up 64 points with Oregon against his opponents LSU team. In fact the opponent conceded before the 4th quarter had ended. From there his opponent made some defensive adjustments leading into the next game. After trailing 0-21 midway through the 2nd quarter Matt went on a run to tie it up before the end of the 3rd. His efforts were not enough as his opponent would score a last minute touchdown closing out Game 2 35-42.
The deciding game of Matt's Ohio State versus the opponents South Carolina was back and forth up to the very end. Each player took turns scoring touchdowns eventually heading to OT. MAC scored the first OT touchdown and successfully converted on their PAT. Matt then systematically brought the ball down the field scoring his own touchdown. Matt made the decision to go for two to take the game, however the conversion was unsuccessful and Matt dropped the final game 41-42.
What's Next
With three teams officially underway and one debuting this week, Spalding Esports is up and running even better than last semester! As they dive into new titles and look to improve on past success this semester is all about growth. Catch the Golden Eagles live each week Monday through Thursday on their Twitch and YouTube channels.
