We are already looking towards next season, and will be actively looking to recruit across the entire organisation. We will be looking to increase our social media presence, our content creation, and extra playing opportunities.

Playing

• League of Legends
• Valorant
• Apex Legends
• Street Fighter 6

• Rocket League
• Overwatch 2

Non-Playing

• Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan (With or Without guidance)
• Create and schedule posts and content
• Run activities to increase engagement
• Working with our content team

• Stream 1 title per week
• Create highlights package for the stream
• Create a weekly roundup of clips provided by our teams

• Team Management
• Analyst
• Coach
• Personal Trainer

The final two races of the Student Racing League took place this week. This was an early start for TRC, Wantage in Oxfordshire (the home of Williams F1) is a very long way away, and we set off around 6AM and finally arrived at just after 10AM. Our journey was made harder by an accident on the A34. We finally got back to Rotherham at 20:30 so a very long day.

Overall, it was an excellent day with a sprint race in Austria (ie 2 x 25% race distances) and then a race at Silverstone. We started the day in 4th place with a lead of just 15 points on St Vincent. One good thing about everyone racing in the same place is you can see how good the other drivers are. Lewis for St Vincent was extremely quick and deserved to overturn our lead.

Thomas Rotherham College have therefore finished in Fifth place in Split 1, with the other splits and the teams who set hotlap times to qualify, this is out of over 30 teams. Our local rivals, Barnsley College won the lower Split 2 championsjip.

It has been a busy month since our last update. Our Overwatch 2 team made the Open Div 2 Eliminations, losing in the Last 16 game against Blackhorse Knights. In Rocket League we have had a run to the Open Div 2 eliminations and have made it to the Semi-Final.

In the Student Racing League in collaboration with Williams Esports, we have have completed a double sprint race in China and a standard race in Azerbaijan. Over these 2 races TRC Cobras have amassed 37 points including our first podium with a 3rd & 4th finish in Azerbaijan.

This week will see us play our Rocket League Semi-Final, and also compete in the final SRL race before the live LAN races at Williams F1.

After a 2 week break for half term, TRC Cobras were back in action in both Rocket League and Overwatch. This round of games was the midway point of the Spring Split. In Overwatch our team played ACES Beyond, a team from Birmingham with the same game record. Although some maps were close, TRC Cobras won the game 3 maps to nil.

In Rocket League, TRC Cobras played NCL Vikings a team from Newcastle. Following a close first game which finished 3 - 2 to the TRC Cobras, the remaining games became one sided with TRC victories 5-1 and 4-1. We still have a 100% win record in the Spring Split, however the next game will also be against a team with a 100% win record. Only the top 8 teams in the Spring Split will make it through to the elimination phase.

No Student Racing League this week, the next race is the 13/03/2024.

This week was quite interesting on many levels, a promising SRL Race was spoilled by a late safety car, and in Rocket League we submitted our first ever unsporting behaviour ticket.

Race 4 of Student Racing League was Bahrain, a track our drivers had been looking forward to. Despite pole position going to GCS with a time fractionally slower than the world record, TRC Cobras qualified well in the top 10. A steady and safe start followed by the scheduled pitstop, TRC Cobras had P4 & P5. A late safety car saw us move up to P3 & P4 on the track. However TRC George recieved a 5 second penalty for speeding in the pitlane.

The ending of the safety car gave us a 2 lap sprint to the end of the race, however on the second corner of the restart TRC Marco lost the car on the curbs and spun out of contention. He rejoined at the back of the field. TRC George managed to build up enough of a gap to finish in 7th after his penalty was applied (not bad for 2 laps of racing). TRC Macro finished out of the points.

Rocket League was entertaining this week, our team consisted of two of our regular players plus another we poached from our basketball team (one of our regular players was ill). All was going well against a team of diamonds & plats, TRC won the first game 4-0 and the second game 8-0. The third game was to decide the game but unfortunately not on the day, for the third game the opposition introduced a new player who was GC3 and we lost game 3. However I had recognised the new players ID from previous seasons and they are listed on the roster for the oppositions first team, and we are meant to be playing their second team.

This therefore meant they allowed a player to play in 2 different teams in the same week. In the past when we run multiple RL teams (once we had 4 teams) I would ensure any replacement players aren't much better than those they replaced. If they were champ 1 we wouldn't have complained.

In Overwatch, TRC Cobras stormed to a dominant victory over Hullraisers OW2-A. A welcome return to form after the previous weeks disappointment.

This week saw a return to action for our esports teams. With Rocket League and Overwatch in Student Champs action, and also our sim racers in Student Racing League action. Rocket League saw TRC Cobras take on PenOwls1 (a development team from GCS). A convincing first game set the tone for the tie, with a convincing 3-0 match victory.

Our Overwatch team suffered a shock loss against AshtonOW2, despite being on top and on the brink of a whitewash we lost the subsequent maps. The game turned into an epic marathon with the TRC Cobras fading to a defeat.

We also competed in Split 1 of the Student Racing League, a F1 23 league in collaboration with Williams Esports. Split 1 is for the top ten teams and is only for racing rigs (no controllers allowed). Race 3 was at Brazil, a classic track which always provides great action. TRC George built on a solid qualifying performance to finish in the points in fifth place. Our second driver in the race was Bradson_gaming, they used a difficult qualifying to make a clean start and was able to pick up several positions. A couple of safety cars really kept Bradson_gaming in the mix until a few laps to go. A 15th place finish in the end, but still learning and improving on a wheel and rig setup.

The week will see TRC Cobras back in action. The Spring Split will be starting for our Rocket League and Overwatch 2 teams, they have both been placed into Division 2 in the British Esports Open Championships. In Rocket League TRC Cobras only just missed out on Division 1, but it means we should be a competitive Division 2 team.

In Week 1, our Rocket League team will be playing PenOwls1 a team from GCS (not sure about the connection). PenOwls1 have said they are a school team & didn't compete during the Winter Split, but we don't really know any more. Our Overwatch team will be playing AshtonOW2, another new team for the Spring Split from Ashton Sixth Form College. They had entered one Overwatch team in the Winter Split, and this will be their second team.

This week also see's the next Student Racing League race in conjunction with Williams Esports. TRC Cobras complete in the top split (Split 1) and represent Aston Martin in the game. The race this week is Brazil and our best driver (Marco) is unavailable, so our third driver will be in action this week.

After last weeks solid start to the Student Racing League TRC Cobras were back in action in Race 2 of Split 1. Remember Split 1 is for the best 10 qualifying teams, Split 2 is for the next 10 teams, and then Split 3 is for the rest. New to this week was the fully streamed Split 2 race with Williams Esports deciding to stream Split 2 races as well. It was certainly an entertaining watch & give some indication of what was to come in Split 1.

Overall the Split 1 race was a excellent standard with clean driving across the field. The race took place in Qatar, which is renowned for the sheer number of track limits violations. SRL doesn't have track limits on strict, so their was some liberties taken but overall it was fair.

In the team championship TRC Cobras are now 4th on 17 points. The next race is on the 31st January and its Brazil followed by Bahrain on the 7th February.

This week was the first race in the inaugural Student Racing League. TRC Cobras qualified for Split 1 as the 5th best team overall. Each of the Split 1 races are streamed live on the Williams Esports Twitch channel. In the team selection process we got our first choice of Aston Martin (later teams actually choose Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari). The first race was Abu Dhabi, and turned out to be very eventful with several safety cars.

Qualifying went well for Marco (SmellyEllis or TRC Marco in the steam), setting a decent time and a top 10 start, TRC Anaconda (Yeetus) qualified just outside of the top 10 but found 2 seconds on his initial lap.

The race was full of incidents, safety cars, and overtakes but through the carnage both drivers finished in the points with a 8th & 10th place finishes. This was later promoted to 7th & 10th after another driver completed a double overtake by going off track, the subsequent penalty pushed Marco up one place.

No time to rest, we are racing Qatar this week, so check out the Williams Esports at 16:15

It's official, we have qualified for split 1 of the Student Racing League organised by Williams Esports in conjunction with British Esports. The top ten teams made it to split one, and we had been in 4th place for the last few weeks but due to some late times we have dropped to 5th. We are the only Yorkshire based team, and are only 1 of 2 northern teams (the other is Burnley College).

We are going to represent Aston Martin in the game, this was the first choice of our drivers. We have decided our team selection order with input from the drivers and my blatant hatred of Red Bull.

We are taking part in the test event today at 4pm, a surprise race with less than 24 hours notice but we will be ready. We are still in the process of setting up our live telemetry system so this won't be available to our drivers but could be for the first championship race next week.

I'm not sure if the test event will be streamed, however every one of our races will be streamed by Williams Esports and British Esports.

We have just played the games in Week 4 of the 2023 Winter split. Devastated is an understatement, we lost 3 games to 2 in Rocket League, we lost 13-0 in Valorant, but our Overwatch team had a dominant win. They took apart a weaker team in a very convincing style winning every map & point.

For the Valorant game TRC Cobras were quickly stream rolled by a really strong side of immortal's and radiant's, well above our ranks. LCC QH Riptide took apart our defence and offence in record time, I would hate to play the team that defeated LCC QH Riptide in an earlier round.

It will take a while to get over the Rocket League defeat against Coventry Crosshairs, after winning the first 2 games and 1 to nil in the third with zero (yes zero) seconds on the clock we conceded a goal to send it to overtime. We unfortunately lost this game in overtime, game 4 was completely different, TRC Cobras came back from a 2 goal deficit late on to force overtime but we lost the game in overtime. The final decider was tight and the score of 1-1 looked to be sending us to another overtime, but with 4 seconds on the clock Coventry scored the winner.

Overall, it was our best performance to date against a strong team, Coventry's best player was GC2 in 3's with a peak rank of GC3, another was GC1. We need to look back at the game and bottle the feelings and disappointment and move onto the next game.

In F1 23 news, we are now the 4th best team in the hot lap standings with many late entries setting new teams to meet the closing date tomorrow. The top 10 teams will go into Split 1 and race in the main competition, we should be still in the top 10 at the close. We will then next week find out which team we will be in the game (hoping for Mclaren or Williams), and then the first race will be on the 29th of November.

After a few weeks break, TRC Cobras were in action this week in the British Esports Student Champs. Week 3 was a successful week with wins in both Valorant and Rocket League, Overwatch was a defeat with some maps being really tight. This now leaves every team winning two and losing one, this is half way through for the Valorant team and the others its almost. Maintaining this win percentage over the remaining games should place our teams in Division 1.

Our Rocket League team played Team Panthera Leo 1, a team from Shipley College. We won 3 games to nil but each game was won by a single goal. Our team captain/coach played for the first time (Blurryissocool) and the team alternated for each game.

In Valorant, a dominant performance vs Wilberforce Wolves with a 13-1 score line saw a return to winning ways for the TRC Cobras. Overwatch saw a defeat 3-2, 2-1, & then 3-0 against BSA Griffins OW2 B. The earlier maps were tighter than the 3-0 score suggests bur the better team won at the end of the day, this was the teams first defeat and the nature of a swiss stage is that maintaining a winning run becomes very difficult.

We also have some F1 news, we now have 3 drivers for the season and we now have a calendar of events. The hotlap challenge closes in 7 days, and we will then see which split we get into. This will be based on the average of our best 2 drivers, and this current puts us in 3rd place with 10 teams making split 1.

After a disappoint first week which saw two defeats and a win, week 2 was a welcome return to success for TRC Cobras. Our Overwatch2 team continues to take the Open North section by storm with another victory (against CSG Gamers B) without dropping a point, the second week running. The team continues to show excellent signs of cohesion and team spirit.

After a loss in a tight match last week, our Rocket League team bounced back with a win against Sandwell College. They won 3 games to 2 overall, a decider was required after an overtime loss in game 4. However we seemed to respond well to close out the final game with a healthly lead in the final minutes of the game.

Our Valorant team have potentially got a default win for their game against JLC. With JLC not having a sufficient number of players to start the game. However in the interests of the tournament, the spirit of fair play, and friendship we have offered to try an replay the game on 1st November.

After a delay, this week was our first games of the 2023 Winter split. We have made big changes and are running differently this season. In the past we have tried to maximize the number of teams and running around 6 teams in each of our seasons so far.

We are now making our teams out of students from our Representative Esports cohort. Students are timetabled from 12:20 to 15:00 every Wednesday and we use this time to prepare for our matches at 16:00. We try to have weekly VOD reviews, scrims, fitness, and coaching sessions on a rota basis.

Our Overwatch 2 team took on BSDC Swans with a convincing win in record time and without dropping a point. Our Valorant team lost 13-7 against Q Esports, despite a dominant performance on defence our attack was lacking. Finally our Rocket League team lost 3 games to nil against BMET. The games were closer than the score suggested, 2-1, 2-0, & 2-1.

Next week will start with a team debrief and VOD reviews, our Rocket League team will be having a coaching session, and our Valorant team will be playing some extra scrims.

On the F1 front, we are currently working on the first hot lap challenge. The original deadline to set a time was the 20th October, this as now moved to 17th November. Our drivers have an extra month to improve their times.

The initial selection process is over, we now have rosters for most titles with only Apex Legends left to sort out.

Check out the teams in the teams section above. All of the students are part of our Representative Esports provision and will be preparing and training from 12:20 every wednesday. Each team will have a weekly plan to cover everything from fitness, nutrition, team sessions, VOD review, analyst sessions, and scouting.

We are competing in the British Esports Open in Rocket League, Overwatch 2, Valorant, and League of Legends. You will be able to track our progress on this site.

We will be hosting trials this year to help with the selection of players. The trials will happen for all British Esports Student Champs titles. Although these are aimed at new students, existing players are welcome to come along. Our teams will have some carry over players from last season so spaces on our top teams may be limited. We will always ensure our best players are in TRC Cobras teams.

We will also need to have substitute players and each of these will be given an alternative role to play as well. For example a player might be a substitute for our top rocket league team, but they will also be assigned a role to scout the opposition players or watch upcoming opponents in a streamed game.

TRIAL DATES:

• F1 23 : 30/08/23 - 11am
• RL: 30/08/23 - 11am
• Valorant: 31/08/23 - 1pm
• LoL: 30/08/23 - 1pm
• Overwatch2: 1/9/23 - 9am

Each trial will be an opportunity to record your ranks, abilities and preferred roles. But each trial will involve you playing the game as well. The F1 23 trial will require you to complete a time trial of 3 laps on the Silverstone circuit with the assist settings of Student Racing League.

After a successful first season in esports we wanted to build on this and further improve and expand the esports opportunities available. In 2022/23 we expanded the titles offered and add more teams, this included entering League of Legends and Overwatch2. We also organised a few events including TRC Brawl and the South Yorkshire Rocket League Cup. We also started Rep Esports, to allow our teams to practice and prepare.

2022/23 also included a few disappointments with the FIFA and Minecraft opportunities not materialising. Also the Apex Legends tournament opportunities vanished one by one with the organisers cancelling their events. We also had a disappointing season with none of our teams making it to the National Divisons, and none of our Division 1 teams made it past the first round elimination.

2023/24 will see us develop further and expand the role students play within our organisation. We want to be student led and run, our role should be to supervise and potentially cover any gaps.

ORGANISATION

We really want to be a student led organisation so we will seek to appoint students to key areas including Player Management, Coaching, Scouting & Analysis, Social Media, Content Creation, and a Player Representitive.

2023/24 will see the introduction of player contracts and all players will need to sign and agree to the terms and conditions. Every player must join the TRC Cobras Discord server, and select their availability on a weekly basis. We will also ensure that any student playing on a non academy team must be signed onto Rep Esports.

In order to avoid the situation of folding a team we will only be adding a new team if existing teams already have sufficient substitutes.

CONTENT

We will stream one Student Champs title every week. We will try to vary the title as much as possible to ensure equal coverage.

We will really push social media in 2023/24. We will appoint a student to this role and will aim to generate posts on a weekly cycle to cover pre & post game, streaming schedules, and other esports related news.

STUDENT CHAMPS

We will enter teams in the following titles:

• Rocket League
• Valorant
• League of Legends
• Overwatch 2

We will enter two drivers in the Student Racing League, the new collaboration between British Esports and Williams Esports.

FIFA/Football should be back for the 2023/24 season, when any announcement is made we will look to organise an entry. This is currently very unclear with the current state of EA/FIFA etc.

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

We will continue to organise events to expand the opportunities beyond the Student Champs. This will include organising the TRC BrawlHalla Invitational (open to all colleges), and the TRC Brawl (TRC students only).

Once the Student Champs schedule is published we will also organise the South Yorkshire Rocket League Cup . We will invite every South Yorkshire based Student Champs Rocket League team and use it to practice between the winter and spring splits.

New to 2023/24 will be some fun tournaments using Fall Guys including a tournament for both staff and students.

POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES

We will look to organise other events to expand the overall participation and the titles our students can compete in. We will potentially organise tournaments in eFootball, Halo Infinite, and Destiny 2.

We will look to enter Minecraft based esports. 2021/22 was the first season for MCCL but nothing materialised for 2022/23, so opportunities might be difficult to find.

We will form a team to compete in Apex Legends tournaments, however previous tournament opportunities have vanished so we will look at other opportunities via Challenger Mode. We will aim to enter at least 1 tournament per month but the scheduling of events seems to give only a week or so notice.

We have sourced two sim racing frames, and two sets of Logitech wheels and pedals (One is for PS5/PC and the other is XBOX/PC). We have also sourced some screens and some monitor stands to complete the hardware. We will have one of our PS5 & one of our Xbox Series X moved into the sim racing room as soon as possible.

One of our esports students has already tested them with the PC version of F1 22 and was very happy with the setup so far. I have also got a copy of the briefing pack from the 2022 pilot events, so any driver will need to have the following off:

• Steering Assist
• Braking Assist
• Dynamic Racing Line
• Pit Assist
• ERS Assist
• DRS Assist

We have organised a date for the F1 selection trials so remember to sign up for Rep Esports at enrollment. The trials will be 5 minutes to sort out the rig and get you comfortable, then another 5 minutes to have a bit of practice, and finally at least a three lap time trial. The circuit will be announced closer to the trials.

On wednesday British Esports dropped the bomb which totally changed the direction and focus of TRC Cobras for the 2023/24 season. In conjunction with Williams Esport, 2023/24 will see the National Student Racing League. Sim Racing is something we have thought about before but always ignored it due to a lack of a competitive space to compete against other schools and colleges.

The details are currently sketchy, with further info coming soon. We are therefore looking to put together an entry level setup with the aim to improve our provision over time. The plan is to start with Logitech g29 / g920 / g923 wheels and pedals, these are established and accepted to be one of the best non-direct drive wheels. At the moment we are planning to set up an Xbox based rig and a PS5 based rig, this setup will allow us to swap in a PC if required.

We have been talking about this for a long time and I have been asking other colleges about their sim racing setup. All of the colleges said they had started down the Logitech route, with some progressing down the direct drive route and others sticking with the trusted Logitech setup. 2022/23 did see a couple of races involving multiple colleges on an informal basis, these showed that the colleges with the best setup didn't normally win the races. Colleges using the Logitech setup still felt competitive and the results did show that as well.

We will keep you posted.

This week finally saw the completion of the TRC Brawl 2023, previous weeks had been postponed due to illness. The event wasn't streamed in the end due to an issue with our mixing desk and our casters were both ill. The event was for TRC students to compete against each other to determine the TRC Brawl Champion.

Our Brawlhalla team (Gemini FRI, and Iyvern FRI) couldn't enter, they have beaten the top players in the world so it would be a little unfair. The remaining players battled it out in a round robin format. Each match was a best of three with a free choice of character, with some players deciding to play to their strengths with their preferred character and others trusting randomness and fate.

Our overall winner and TRC Brawl Champion is...... 'DJVras', narrowly beating 'Sam' 2-1 in their round robin game with 'Sam' taking the runner up spot.

Tomorrow will finally see our first TRC Brawl, a Brawlhalla solo tournament for TRC students. The tournament will be run as a group stage with all entrants playing each other in best of 3 matches. Points will be awarded for a win (3) and for a loss (1), the group winner will be the TRC Brawl 2023 Champion.

Our official TRC Cobras Brawlhalla team will be on hand for advice, and hopefully to shoutcast the event. The finale of the tournament will be an opportunity for the entrants to battle 'Gemini FRI' & 'Ivyern FRI' in a 2v6 or potentially two 1v4 matches.

We are looking to organise more community esports opportunities for TRC students, so watch this space for future events.

After an amazing and entertaining final, TRC Cobras Academy are your Division 2 Valorant Champions for the 2022/23 season.

The final was live on the Student Champs twitch stream and can be found HERE. It was our first final ever and our only official appearance on a British Esports stream of the season.

Watch the above stream if you can, but I won't spoil it by detailing the scores. I have ripped the footage from twitch for us to save but we can't really upload it online

Following from our previous news item, the TRC Cobras Academy Valorant team have made it to the Division 2 Grand Final. This was following the 13-10 victory over Serentity_Val, we seemed to make the game tighter than it should have been with some poor teamwork and dare I say complacency. We had a devasting start on attack establishing a clear lead.

We had decided to take the night off from streaming, so I watched it from the oppositions stream. This involved just one of their players screens, but also their entire team comms (ps I had zero contact with our team so this wasn't any sort of advantage). The team comms was an interesting listen, the normal "I don't know who I keep coming up against but they are clearly cheating, their shots are unreal". The comms also made it clear they had watched some of our other games and looked at the stats and accounts of our players.

The game some how got to 9-9 despite for example one round on attack with 30 seconds left and still 5v5, all 5 players of Serenity died within 4 seconds of each other. The 9-9 score line seemed to refocus our efforts to finish off the match.

The final will be on Wednesday (10/05/2023) at 4pm (still awaiting confirmation) and should be streamed on the British Esports Twitch Channel. I'll post a link here when we have everything confirmed. For students at TRC, we are planning to have a watch party in/around S11. The final is a best of 3 rounds so be prepared for a long stay, if it went all the way we could be leaving at about 7pm.

Our second year double students organised their Unit 5 Esports Event this week. A multi game tournament to find the best all round players. Teams of upto 6, competed in a 3v3 Brawlhalla Brawl, followed by a 3v3 Rocket League match and finished off with a 3v3 in Halo Infinite.

Students set up a view area with a large screen to allow spectators to watch the tournament unfold. They also set up the competition devices and the entire stream setup. In the down time players and spectators could have a go at a series of challenges and a gaming quiz. The individual with the highest all round score on the challenges won a TRC Cobras jersey.

Congratulations to Nebvlx's team, having our best Brawlhalla player on your team really gave you a good start to the tournament. The Jersey was won by an Esports student called Ethan with over 14 mouse clicks per second, and an average reaction time of less than 0.22 seconds.

Student of the day was clearly WIll, he was responsible for the spectator events and even put away all of the tables and chairs on his own, he wasn't there when we said to leave them until the morning. Overall the event was a success and has set a high benchmark for future events.

You can watch the stream HERE

The first elimination round was a difficult one for TRC Cobras. Our Overwatch team lost in their elimination game, this was a disappointing end to their season, but after a Winter promotion reaching the elimination stage in the higher division was a real achievement.

Rocket League saw our Academy team defeated in a very onside game, but again we earned our Winter promotion and have been adapting to life in Division 1 North. Our main Rocket League team, TRC Cobras, had a tough game against KE6 Vanguard. This was a chalk and cheese affair with the Cobras losing 3-2. We fought hard to overturn a poor first game, but ran out of steam in the decider.

Valorant was a more successful affair with a dominant victory in the Division 2 elimination game to reach the next phase. We go on to play Brentwood Eagles next week.

Next week will see the start of the playoffs for the Grand Final Lan.

We have qualified for the Division 1 North Playoffs in Overwatch (TRC Cobras), and Rocket League (Both TRC Cobras & Cobras Academy). Our Valorant team have also qualified for the Division 2 Playoffs.

Each title will have different qualifying criteria, each Division 1 title & region will have its own grand final LAN. In Overwatch the top 3 teams per group qualify, with TRC Cobras finishing 3rd in Group C of Division 1 North. In Rocket League the top 4 teams per group qualify, TRC Cobras Finished 3rd in Group A of Division 1 North and TRC Cobras Academy finished 4th in Group G of Division 1 North.

Division 2 is organised differently, with both Division 2 South & Division 2 North combined in the playoffs with a single grand final LAN. Only the group winners qualified for the playoffs, TRC Cobras Academy Valorant team qualified as the winners of Group E.

Our opponents will be announced next week, so there will be a small turn around between the announcement and the game itself.

From the start of the Spring Split we have started to ramp up our streaming output. In week one we streamed Rocket League to YouTube with the two TRC Cobras teams winning both games. This stream was planned very differently to what actually went out live. ManxBazza designed the graphics and overlays, students had been lined up to shoutcast but due to illness they couldn't make it, so we had to shoutcast the game ourselves. The ouptut was decent but not what we wanted in the long term, you can watch it Here.

Week 2 was a League of Legends stream over Twitch, this went more to plan and we had a student shoutcaster. The shoutcasting was excellent, however we left OBS audio set to monitor for most of it and only caught the end of the game.

Week 3 (last week) was more inline with what we wanted. Students helped at all stages of the process with Nebvlx setting up the equipment and Gemini (FRI) / or the Rizzler shoutcasting. The graphic were mainly created by ManxBazza with editing by Nebvlx. You can watch the stream Here

Week 4 improved our stream even more with two student shout casters, and again student support to set everything up. We still needed to run the stream with Nebvlx dropping into the Valorant team to cover a late drop out. The other big addition was replay and highlight clips. You can watch the stream Here

Week 5 was another Overwatch 2 stream and was again an improvement on our previous output. You can watch the stream Here

Our Brawlhalla players are still training hard for the upcoming Ghost League and Brawlhalla Esports events. They are consistently around or above 1800 elo. This week they have played the best 2 players in the world on 2 separate occasions and won.

Everyone here at TRC Cobras are so proud with the progress of Gemini & Ivyern, keep up the hard work and remember to keep it fun and real.

Now the winter split has drawn to a conclusion, our final Wednesday saw the inaugural Winter Split Awards. We have created 5 awards in total for the best player, best manager/IGL, best team, most improved player, and our Garth Ragna Award for the player who has made the biggest transformation to their lifestyle, well being, fitness, and diet to improve their in-game performance.

We now have a store to purchase TRC Cobras apparel, this can be accessed from the navigation bar or by accessing https://esk.gg/collections/trc-cobras

Our friends at ESK have also designed our new jersey:

ESK have also designed our new hoodie:

Congratulations to BSA Griffins for winning the inaugural South Yorkshire RL Cup, it was a dominating performance which no team could deal with or counter.

The final positions:
1st) BSA Griffins
2nd) TRC Cobras Academy
3rd) Maltby Miners
3rd) Dearne Valley Minotaurs

Match one was contested by TRC Cobras Academy and Maltby Miners, with TRC coming out on top with a 2-0 win in the best of 3 match. Match two saw BSA Griffins take on Dearne Valley Minotaurs, with BSA Griffins winning the match 2-0.

Match three was contested by the two losers from match one & two. This game was abandoned in the end due to a invading troll who kept joining the game. Therefore i have listed both Maltby Miners and Dearne Valley Minotaurs in joint third place.

Match four was the final between TRC Cobras Academy and BSA Griffins. A very one sided game 1 created a slightly closer game 2, but with the same BSA Griffins victory. They claimed the final with a convincing 2-0 win, so BSA Griffins are your undisputed Rocket League Champions of South Yorkshire for 2022. All South Yorkshire Student Champs teams received an invite, and hopefully next year we can get a full tournament and an expanded format.

This was our first adventure into organising a tournament, and to say it was a learning curve would be an understatement. The students we had organised for running the stream and casting each game failed to show due to illness, this meant we just put out the game footage to test our streaming setup. The planned streaming setup had to change last minute due to restrictions on the streaming PC (we couldn't fix the in game audio). We moved to plan B and streamed everything from a XBOX Series X instead and annoyingly it worked first time.

I want to personally apologise if the chat on the feed included any inappropriate comments, we at TRC Cobras are fully committed to developing an organisation in which all are welcome and valued. The original plan was for a student to monitor and run the chat.

So it ended up being a one person operation which was very tough to do at the same time as organising other teams and games. We also in the future will try to only use discord for communication, this would allow us to only send the competing teams the lobby details. One of the games was spoiled by another player joining the game, but unfortunately I didn't notice in time to block the player. The game was abandoned in the end.

We will certainly learn from this experience and create a smoother running tournament next time.

Get Wednesday November 2nd 2022 in your diary, we are organising the South Yorkshire RL Cup 2022. Games will be played between 4pm & 5:30pm in the normal Student Champs slot. All games will be best of 3 instead of the normal best of 5, this will cut down the potential game time. We have students ready to run the stream and cast the games.

4 teams have entered the inaugural South Yorkshire RL Cup, TRC Cobras Academy, BSA Griffins, Dearne Valley Minotaurs, & Maltby Miners. We had also invited the NCD Vulcans (New College Doncaster) and the XI-Blades RL (Sheffield United Community College), the remaining South Yorkshire teams. However we will close entries and run to the following tournament plan.

Tournament Plan

The TRC students streaming will create the private lobby for the playing teams to join. The matches will be:
Match 1 (16:00): TRC Cobras Academy (1) vs Maltby Miners (3)
Match 2 (16:25): BSA Griffins (2) vs Dearne Valley Minotaurs (4)
Match 3 (16:50): Match 1 Loser vs Match 2 Loser
Match 4 (17:15): Match 1 Winner vs Match 2 Winner

I have sent invitations to all South Yorkshire teams competing in the British Esports Student Champs Rocket League section. These include New College Doncaster, Dearne Valley College, Barnsley College, Maltby Academy, and Sheffield United Community College.

The proposal is to play a mini league on November 2nd, the week before the group stages for the Student Champs. We at TRC will only enter one of our teams, but could enter more in order to make up the numbers. We propose best of 3 matches to reduce the time required, and the exact format will be decided when everyone as responded to the invitations.

We are wanting to stream the event and have currently got a student willing to run the stream, and we are looking for casters as we speak.

We at TRC Esports will be hosting a Brawlhalla tournament on the 19th October, this will coincide with some Student Champs down time. We are hosting it via challenger mode and it will be for duos. The minimum number of teams required is 4 and the maximum is currently set to 8, this will allow us to run the tournament within the 4 to 6pm window of a normal Student Champs wednesday.

You can access the tournament from this link.The tournament is currently set to invite only so if you want to play contact us using the email address or the contact form on the contact us page. This will be our first attempt at tournament hosting so please bare that in mind if you do decide to enter.

You will be competing for the TRC Brawlhalla Invitational Cup, hopefully the first of many Brawlhalla events we want to organise.

After our first week of 2022/23 we have updated our esports plan. We had to make changes due to the change in valorant start time, and confirmation that players can play from home if they can't play from online.

We are going to enter the the Student Champs in:

• Rocket League
• Valorant
• League of Legends
• Overwatch 2
• FIFA 23

We will also look beyond the Student Champs to also enter the Minecraft Collegiate League. We will also form a team to compete in Apex Legends with the aim to enter at least 1 tournament per month .

We have been looking at tournament organisation via Challenger Mode. We could use this to organise some community tournaments for games such as Street Fighter 5, Tekken 7, FIFA, eFootball, or Brawlhalla.

Check out our Esports Plan 2022/23 from the About tab above.

We have created a space on Challengermode for TRC esports community events & tournaments. Challengermode is a platform to bring together communities and players, from the player point of view it makes it easy to sign up for and compete in tournaments. From the community point of view it gives us a space to coordinate esports activities and to also schedule and run tournaments covering many titles.

So if you are interested in esports and are currently studying at TRC, we would recommend you join Challengermode ASAP. You can find the TRC esports space HERE .

All events will be restricted to TRC students, and the most effective way of doing this is to make all tournaments invite only. This will prevent anyone from just entering the tournament, we propose to either distribute the invite over college email (therefore restricting it to students) or interested students will be able to request an invite.

Our first events will be for Rocket League with the TRC 1v1 Cup,and the TRC 2v2 Cup on the 14th September 2022. The 1v1 action will start from 15:30 and the 2v2 action willl be from 16:30, both will be a single elimination format to crown the overall winner.

After a successful first season in esports we at TRC want to build on this and further improve and expand the esports opportunities available.

We are going to enter the the Student Champs in:

• Rocket League
• Valorant
• League of Legends
• FIFA 23

We will also look beyond the Student Champs to also enter the Minecraft Collegiate League. We currently have 2 builders and will be recruiting upto 5 Duel , Spleef, or Bedwars specialists. We will also form a team to compete in Apex Legends with the aim to enter at least 1 tournament per month . The first tournament will be Vulpine Esports VALS5.

We have recruited a Brawlhalla duo, they currently play in-game tournaments and are interested in playing other students around the UK.

Check out our Esports Plan 2022/23 from the About tab above.