Lakeland wins another Esports national title
Lakeland University’s Call of Duty team recently won the Esports program’s first Call of Duty national championship. It’s the third national championship in the program’s history.
Competing in the ECAC, the Muskies played against schools from across the country and Canada to capture the title.
After an impressive 5-2 regular season, the Muskies went into the playoffs as the No. 5 seed and had a first-round rematch against Army West Point Black. Lakeland lost to them 3-1 back in week 1. Lakeland avenged that loss, sweeping the best-of-five series to advance to the semifinals with a strong performance from senior captain Alex Burbach.
Lakeland faced West Virginia Wesleyan in the semifinals in another rematch from the regular season in which the Muskies fell 3-0. The Muskie CoD team got the win on the backs of junior Quinn Bradford and freshman Nik Schwinn.
In the finals (best-of-7 series), Lakeland swept Gallaudet University behind strong performances from Joey Covill in games 1 and 2, Schwinn in game 3 and Bradford and Burbach in game 4.
“This semester we faced a lot of adversity, but we never quit on each other,” Burbach said. “No matter what was going on, we kept showing up, kept working and trusted the process and culture we were making here. The resilience of every member of our team is what made this championship meaningful.”
