CHEYENNE, WY – The Laramie County Community College Call of Duty: Warzone team was on a roll in their Super Region Championship match with Dallas College – North Lake and pulled off the win to enter the national championship tournament for Tier 1 as the top overall seed.
"We are feeling good and peaking at the right time," Head Coach John Kershaw said. "They are communicating good, working good, playing good and their map knowledge is better than it's ever been, so I expect big things from them."
The opening round was a kill-fest between the two teams, but it was LCCC who carried it with a 36-24 score, led by a 24-kill match from Dimitrous Chronopoulos paired with 12 from Isiaha Ahrens to go up 1-0.
"We just flew everywhere," Chronopoulos said. "I was just in that mode where I didn't know what the scoreboard said, I just saw people and went and killed them and kept going for the next and going for the next and that's kind of what we do."
Round two opened with the Golden Eagles getting an early advantage but they never could push the lead to more than two or three kills and finished with 16 by the time they were both eliminated, giving a chance for Dallas College – North Lake to rally back, and that was exactly what happened.
Three kills later, the match was tied at one each after North Lake rallied to win 18-16.
"We lost the game partially because Warzone is about luck sometimes and we got really unlucky at times and (North Lake) was buying each other back a lot. It was a battle but not a very close one."
The Golden Eagle bounced back with another strong showing in the third game where both Chronopoulos and Ahrens each tallied double digit kills to cruise to a 22-11 win and followed that up with an even more dominant 23-7 win that saw Chronopoulos finish with a 16 kill match. He led the team with 57 of the teams 96 kills in the match total.
The win pushes LCCC into the NJCAAe National Semifinals next week as the top overall seed. They will face off against Missouri State University-West Plains who lost to Central Community College in the third-place match.
"We have a lot of confidence going in," Chronopoulos said. "How we were last year is the same as we are this year, just looking for another championship."
The Golden Eagles defeated MSU-West Plains 3-2 in the Super Regional semifinals to move on to the championship.
The duo is currently scheduled to play their semifinal match on Thursday, April 18, 2024, at 4:00 pm with the championship match still to be decided. Schedule updates will be found on the LCCC social media accounts and www.golccc.com.