Cardiff University have been selected as the Pot Noodle Society of the Month for April for their competitive performances and running their first Riot Play Club event! We spoke to the president, Holly, to find out more.
Massive congrats on winning Pot Noodle Society of the Month! Could you give everybody a little overview of how April went for you guys?
April was a packed month for us: our teams have done incredibly well in tournaments this year and lots of us turned up to watch streams and support them, it was awesome to see just how much our community has grown this year and how everyone supports one another. Riot Play Club was amazing- we jumped at the opportunity to run an official Riot sponsored event and despite the quick turnaround for the event, we had loads of fun running all kinds of minigames in a LAN setting. So many people came along to meet others and win prizes, even people from other universities attended as well as Esports Wales came along to join in! Esports Varsity is always one of our most anticipated events of the year, especially since Swansea won a handful of a games in NSE this year so we were a little intimidated going into it. Despite this, all the players came into the event with a strong team spirit and were playing to win. So many games came down to the final rounds with everyone on the edge of their seats, but we finally broke the 3-year loss streak and won it all! If I may, I'd like to say thanks specifically to my committee- everyone single one of them worked incredibly hard (managing two major events in a close time period is a LOT of work) and I am so genuinely grateful, these events wouldn't have happened nor run as smoothly as they did without their dedication.
Sounds like a very busy, but exciting month! I'd love to hear more about the Riot Play Club event and how Cardiff approached putting it on.
We knew we wanted Riot Play Club to be a big event, so we basically went all out, hiring out one of the big event spaces in our SU for it. Although we have our Esports Suite with 10 fully decked out PCs, we also hired some extra PCs for the event and Esports Wales generously brought along some laptops for us to play on too. We wanted to be able to cover all the Riot Games since VALORANT, League of Legends and TFT all have big communities within our Esports Society, so each game had an area dedicated to them. The Committee were already working hard on organising Esports Varsity at the time, but we took on Riot Play Club because we didn't want to pass up the opportunity to do an event for the people who are so passionate about these games. VALORANT did Swiftplay tournaments and games of Escalation, and League of Legends ran full Summoner's Rift games as well as some cool minigames in the practice tool- we got to give away skin codes, but I think many people were there to simply to play games against each other. TFT had a Tocker's Trials high score competition as well as rounds of TFT Bingo designed by our Small Games Representative herself. We also had a fun colouring area for people to design their own Poros, and watched live VCT games on the big screen. I was incredibly happy to see so many people come along even when it was announced on short notice, and both Committee and Game Representatives alike put their heart and soul into making it a wonderful event. We're looking forward to doing it again next year, finger crossed!
Thank you! It's great to see passionate people coming together, both to run and attend esports events. Speaking of esports - Cardiff SMURFED across the board this year, taking down Swansea (might I add, no easy feat as they had the second highest BUEC points overall) in Varsity, and setting your own PB in the BUEC table. Do you have any performances you're especially proud of, or anybody in particular you'd like to thank for the victories?
Honestly, I'd like to shoutout the Game Representatives- although I know some of them were hesitant to take the position at the start of the year, they all stepped up to it. Since we are on the larger side when it comes to Esports Societies, many of them had multiple teams to manage and organise- which I know is incredibly stressful as a former Game Representative myself- but they all did incredibly well, especially the Marvel Rivals Representative who joined halfway through the year. Overwatch definitely ran the most community events, CS:2 found new tournaments to get involved in, Rocket League and Siege made a resurgence in players this year, and we even succeeded in getting individuals into the smaller game tournaments like Fighting Games and osu!. Game Representatives are key people in cultivating both community and competitive spirit, and I am so thankful of the incredible job they've done this year. You can see just how much everyone's efforts have paid off in the results- I was hoping to get within the top 10 this year and we definitely smashed it!
It certainly seems like the Game Reps put in a ton of effort to ensure Cardiff excelled this year! Do you have anything else you'd like to add: maybe future projects, or goals for next year?
I'd just want to say another massive thank you to everyone- members of the society, the Committee and the Game Representatives, as well as the university gaming community as a whole; I've met so many wonderful people through gaming and I'm so grateful to be a part of it all. Since we're into exam season now, we don't have big events planned, just a nice end of year social for our members once all deadlines are done. As for next year, I'm confident we can make top 5, so keep an eye on us!
We'll be sure to keep our eyes peeled! To wrap things all up, it's time for the Pot Noodle themed question. Every Pot Noodle comes with its own little sauce packet, each in different flavours to elevate the Pot Noodle itself. Cardiff clearly had their own 'secret sauce' to success - if you had to pick a sauce flavour to represent your society, what would it be and why?
Something red and fiery, like a roaring dragon- so a spicy sauce with chilli flakes!
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