CHEYENNE, WY – The Laramie County Community College esports team was in semifinal action against Catawba Valley Community College in the Call of Duty: Warzone 2 in a rematch of the only loss in the regular season and the team picked up the revenge win to advance to the second national championship match in the title in school history.
"It feels really good," sophomore Andrew Santhuff said. "It's actually a really big reliever knowing that that team is out of the way and now we are just looking forward to this next match."
"They played so great today," Head Coach Cindy Benites said. "Their communication, their kills, everything. D.C. and Andy have put in so much work this season, to see it finally pay off and for them to go to the national championship, it's more than I could have asked for from them."
The Golden Eagles both got into early trouble in the Gulag but also were able to pick up some quick kills to get to an early advantage on the Red Hawks with Santhuff picking up four kills and Dimitrios Chronopoulos adding three. Both Catawba gunners were eliminated quickly with only one kill between the two of them and LCCC opened with a 1-0 lead in the best of five.
Game two opened with four nice kills for Chronopoulos and Santhuff adding another to give them an early edge as the Red Hawks had one of their own head to the Gulag and lose. Another kill for D.C. moved the Golden Eagles in front 6-2. Another kill for each and a pair of quick deaths for CVCC had the Golden Eagles up 8-2 and they finished off the game with a win to go up 2-0 in the match.
"We got a lot of momentum," Santhuff said. "I think they let their heads down a little bit because they were a great team and I think they still are. They just had an off day and we were playing really well."
Laramie County had a chance to close out the match with a sweep in the third game and Chronopoulos picked up the opening kill to get LCCC back in front. The pair was able to get up 5-3 without any deaths from either side and Chronopoulos lead the way with four. Catawba was able to steal a pair of the LCCC kills to even the game at five all.
The two sides remained close Chronopoulos was playing a strong match with ten of the 13 team kills for LCCC as they built up their lead to 13-9 and began to pull away from Catawba Valley.
Both Golden Eagles were downed with 17 combined kills and up by seven, the Red Hawks needed a long rally to win the match. CVCC made a rally to close it to two but the opposing pair was knocked out with Laramie County taking the game 17-15 and the match with a 3-0 sweep.
Santhuff said waiting while you can't do anything but watch the other team finish is stressful but he wasn't worried about the match since they had the 2-0 advantage heading into it.
"I'm confident that if they would have won that, we would have won the next one so I wasn't stressed out too bad. Thankfully they didn't win because I'd rather it be us."
"All my nerves after that second game just left me," Benites said. "The fact they were able to go up two against a team that they had lost to previously, it's just amazing to see how much work and time and effort they have put into it and all their efforts paid off."
Laramie County now moves on to the national championship match on Saturday at 6:00 pm where they will face North Central Missouri College. The appearance is the second for the Golden Eagles in the last three years in the Call of Duty: Warzone Grand Final, with the team winning the title in the Spring 2022 season.
This will be the second national championship match for Santhuff, who was a part of the Call of Duty: 4v4 team which made the national championship last spring, and he said he is excited to see what he and Chronopoulos can accomplish.
"Me and D.C. have always had a really good communication playing with each other and have each other's backs. It feels really good and I can't complain."
The match will be streamed on the LCCC esports twitch page which can be found here.