Casual Blog
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to the first Behind the Screens (get it? Behind the Screens? Instead of Behind the Scenes? Yes, yes, bad joke, I know.)!
In this look behind the camera, I’m going to give you all a fair bit of a recap on what we do here, what all teams we run (there are quite a few!), how you can get off your couch and get involved with us, and a little bit of a peek behind the scenes for our media team and other supporting officers who help keep this club fully armed and operational!
Speaking of behind the camera, I ought to introduce myself! My name is Ethan “Beagle” Burks, a freshman here at UAH, and the club’s photographer, in addition to writing for the website!
I also do a fair whack of other writing, in addition to streaming on Twitch, playing a few games casually (because I’m proud of not being good enough for any of our competitive teams!), and otherwise having a good time making terrible puns.
They’re… pretty horrific, I’m not gonna lie. I’ll probably sprinkle a few into my articles… so…
Beagle, when a truly horrendous pun comes to mind:
I’m one of a rapidly growing cast of supporting officers, and there’s a few people I know I want to shout out who you possibly won’t see: There’s my fellow website writer, Sizyll (Ben), whose first article has likely either already been published or is being published very soon; Jeremy, our beloved “Space (Captain)”, who runs our graphic design team (and keeps threatening to retire); Charlie, our Stream Manager; Luke, our Recruitment and Outreach Officer; and Ben and my boss, Ethan (yes, there’s another Ethan!) Johnson, who runs our website and is our resident tech support when it comes to said website. There’s also a slew of other Media Team, Social Team, and Stream Team members scattered across the club, and it’s sadly too many names for me to list off here and keep this concise, but just know that… I see you. I’m watching. Always…
Of course, this club also wouldn’t run without our beloved middle managers: our game leads. Once again, there are also too many of them to rattle off because frankly there are a lot of games we have active, and a lot of leads, but if you ever need to know who to ask regarding questions for your specific games, you can check out our Discord, and find the game leads there, since the game leads will be listed with each of their games below!
Anyway, on to why most of you are probably here in the first place… the games
Apex Legends: Charger Blue, White, Yellow, and Black, a total of four teams, all led by game lead Ethan Johnson; a resurrected game for the club this year, met with an immediate show of support beyond what we were expecting!
Call of Duty: Just our top-level Charger Blue team, captained by game lead Zane Payton.
Counter-Strike (CS:GO/CS2): Two teams, Blue and White, helmed by club Treasurer and game lead Nick O’Bryan.
League of Legends: A total of three teams, led by a new game lead this year, Cameron Gorusch.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe! A brand new game to the club this year, and the one that we can’t find a league for. This year it’ll be more of a casual competition in-house, and that’s captained by similarly new game lead Casey “Draceus” Bonner and his two teams!
Overwatch 2: We’ve got the maximum four teams there, Charger Blue, White, Yellow, and Black! All four teams are collectively led by Mari Swindle!
Rainbow 6 Siege: Two teams there, led by James Fields. This game got saved at the last minute from multiple members moving away from the club this summer, and now we have not one but two teams this year!
Valorant: Another team to explode in popularity this fall, we have our maximum complement of four teams! This is captained by Mr. President himself, Ethan “Efran” Hummel! (GET DOWN, MR PRESIDENT–)
Smash Brothers: A team making a long-awaited return to our competitive roster this spring! Helmed by Game Lead Micheal “Echotwin” Skelton, Smash has 2 teams this semester (Spring 2024) and looking to expand in the Fall 2024 semester!
The Finals: A brand new team for a brand new game, this game has just the one team, and is lead by the legend himself, “Space (Captain)” Jeremy!
And of course…
Rocket League: Long our most visible teams, all four teams are extremely competitive at their respective levels, and Charger Blue just qualified for our first LAN of the season! The four teams are led by the eternally wonderful Ben Morrison, better known as Bmorr!
That said, we do run a whole bunch of games, like I mentioned. Multiple games are actually new to this year, one of which I know we may be working on setting up a collegiate league for because there actually isn’t one anywhere (which was much of a surprise)!
But we always have room for more games! We added two just this year (and saved Siege from the scrap heap), and we’re always looking to add new games to our roster! Once again, shameless plug, but you can always suggest new games in the Discord! That’s actually how we got Mario Kart 8 this year: I became the third person to suggest it, and we made a general call for a fourth player… then got a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and more — we wound up with almost enough interest for three full teams! So always suggest your games, get your friends involved, and join in the fun!
We have a total of 138 players across all of our teams, and YOU could be next…
So what are you waiting for? Grab your friends, or make some new ones, and come on in! We’ll see you on the pitch, the battlefield, and track, so bring your best.
Oh, and of course…
Ethan “Beagle” Burks
Casual Blog Writer