April 2022 Newsletter
Contents
A Word From The League
Jumping Into The Season
Version1 Sponsorship
Off Season Recap
School Merch Store Information
MNVL Youtube Video Of The Month
A Word from the League
Hey All,
We’re excited to welcome everyone back for the Spring ‘22 season! We’re looking forward to getting this season rolling and already through week 3, it’s been nothing but intense action. We’re starting the newsletter a little late this season, but right away we want to thank you for your hard work before and during the season. This league would not be possible without it.
We have a lot of news and events to recap in this month's newsletter, so grab your diet mountain dew, sit back and let us introduce the new programs, our growth statistics, Version1, offseason champions, and important school merch store information.
Before we dive into all of that, we have more exciting news to share with you. We’ve brought on two broadcasting interns and two production interns to help enhance MNVL streams! We couldn’t be more excited to welcome our high school students Zach, Jack, Will, and Owen see their skills make an impact right away.
It’s been an exciting season up till this point and I don’t see it slowing down with all the great teams competing in it. We’re looking forward to watching the race to state with you and want to thank you again for your incredible work.
Minnesota Varsity League
Jumping Into The Season
The Spring ‘22 season is already underway and has shown why this season is the most competitive we’ve ever had across all of our game titles.
Since last season (Fall ‘21) MNVL has been able to welcome more schools into the league, with many new faces and competitors looking to have a good first season. Not only that, but many of our already existing programs have shown growth in adding numbers and expanding teams! It’s amazing to see the results of all the hard work you coaches have been putting into your program, as well as the commitment from each and every player involved.
9 schools have joined MNVL for the Spring ‘22 season:
Annadale
Bemidji
Big Lake
Eagan
High School for Recording Arts
Irondale
Paynesville
Prairie Seeds Academy
Roseville Area Schools
The participation numbers across every game has grown this season from the fall ‘21 season, besides Call of Duty. With COD’s strict age restrictions, only 9 teams were old enough to signup at the start of preseason.
Total members:
Fall 2020: 91
Spring 2021: 355
Fall 2021: 823
Spring 2022: 1,219
Teams Registered at the start of the ‘22 spring preseason: (last season in parenthesis)
Halo: 13 (0)
SSBU: 137 (83)
Rocket League: 45 (32)
Valorant: 47 (32)
Chess: 36 (11)
Call of Duty: 9 (19) note: this went down because we had to move COD to 17+ only due to Activision rules
Minecraft: 18 (17)
None of this would be possible without all the hard work each and every one of you put into your program. We’re striving to keep supporting you in the best ways we can and know these numbers are a representation of your amazing work.
Friday Night Spikes, Presented by Version1
Version-1 will now be sponsoring the MNVL Friday Night Spikes stream showcasing matches in Valorant and Call of Duty. Version1 is a top tier North American Valorant team that has seen recent success in the Valorant Championship Tour.
Version1 owns Rokkr of the Call of Duty League and is a previous sponsor of our Tuesday streams. This is in an effort to collaborate with them on more than just Call of Duty, which has decreased in numbers due to age restrictions implemented this season. This means we are now streaming both Valorant and Call of Duty on Friday’s, but the default match time for Call of Duty is remaining the same on Tuesday’s. Call of Duty teams can reschedule to Friday if they’d like to be on stream.
Off Season Recap
After the ‘21 Fall season, MNVL began hosting our Winter Series which ran for five weeks. The Winter Series is made up of fun tournaments to give players a chance to play between seasons and every tournament winner(‘s) received gaming chairs!
Winter Series Tournament Winners:
League of Legends Invitational: Minnetonka
Rocket League 1v1: Latumos
Call of Duty FFA: Colbs
Valorant Deathmatch: EtanFPS
Halo FFA: Peprika
Halo 4v4: Minnesota Esports Club
Minecraft FFA: RubsterPanda
SSBU 2v2: Da Maniacs
We want to say a big thank you again to all the participants! We always love throwing these tournaments with a more relaxed format than the regular season to have fun with. We hope to be able to continue expanding our off season programming after a great off season like that!
The MN vs WI Border Battle:
WINNER: MINNESOTA!
Along with the Winter Series, this off season MNVL and WISHEA collaborated to host the first annual MN vs WI Border Battle! The battle was comprised of three game titles: Overwatch, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and Rocket League. The best from each state was selected to represent them in the Border Battle on February 19th 2022.
The teams and players that proudly represented Minnesota:
Overwatch: Farmington
SSBU: TMoney (Blaine), DM (Blaine), Thatone meme (Hill Murray), Cado85 (Hill Murray), Phantom (South MPLS)
Rocket League: Spring Lake Park
This event was electric thanks to Concordia - St. Paul, most of the MN players competed in-person together at their facility. MN took a hard fought loss in match 1 in Overwatch, but was followed up by an amazing reverse sweep by our SSBU crew. MN then took a convincing win over WI in Rocket League to cap off the event and brought the win home to MN!! Hats off to all the players in the event.
School Stores Close April 15th
Send out last minute reminders to anyone who was wanting to order your team's merch for the spring season!
With the stores coming to a close soon, our first season introducing merch fundraisers had some learning moments, but hopefully was successful for your program and your players get to rep their team. As is the case with everything else, we want to improve on this initiative and will be asking for your feedback eventually. These fundraising initiatives are important to us in giving support back to our coaches and players.
You can find the links to individual school stores here: https://linktr.ee/MNVLSchoolMerch
MNVL Youtube
View our YouTube channel where we will highlight our players in weekly content!