WIT's Valorant team ready for regionals

The eighth-seeded WIT Valorant team will be an underdog with a favorite's mentality when they take on Laredo College in the first round of Super Regionals on Thursday.

Sure, the top-seeded Palominos sport a 7-0 record and are the presumptive team-to-beat in the eight-team group, the winner and runner-up of which will advance to nationals. But the Comets have been here before and, with all due respect to a formidable Laredo squad, WIT head coach Cale Conner is confident they can reach nationals for a third time in as many semesters.

"Our biggest hurdle in this is going to be Laredo ... but once we beat them, I don't think there will be anything stopping us," Conner said. "We're going to have that gigantic momentum going into the next two or three games.

"I believe we can do it. I think everybody is excited for that, they want to win, they have that mentality."

The Comets (4-3 this spring) consist of Coach Conner, Chris Rice, Davy Tran, Kage Knudsen and Pablo Delatorre, a quintet of competitors that have grown individually and as a team over the course of the school year. The Comets also changed regions, from East to West, resulting in later match times, a potential disadvantage for a school in Central Time.

"Our record this season was 4-3, so it's pretty good. And I'm happy with that. And I'm happy with how we did with the switch to West," Conner said. "The growth of the players in general has been great. Grades have been a lot better than they were last semester for a lot of the players. So that's a win in my book."

The Comets also recently overcame a mid-season slump that Conner chalks up to burnout.

"We hit kind of a plateau, but we're slowly creeping out of it," Conner said. "I think regionals will bring back more of a drive for a lot of the guys."

The team is already back to best-of-three scrimmages three times a week in preparation for the post-season.

Knudsen was recruited to play Valorant even though Conner describes him as "an Overwatch player by trade," who "played a tiny bit of Valorant here and there." Conner thought Knudsen could bring something to the table and that has borne fruit this season.

"In the beginning, it was very hard," Conner said. "We had to tell him everything all the time. Every round it was, 'Here's what you need to do.' More recently it's been significantly better, being able to come up with his own ideas and his own set-ups."

Delatorre has blossomed in his role as a controller, whose job it is to limit the enemy's field of view, control areas of the map and force opponents into choke points.

Knudsen and Delatorre are just two of the pieces that help the Comets operate as a team, each player bringing a skillset and performing a job that allows the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.

"Pablo and Kage have been essential to us," Conner said. "We wouldn't be playing without them." 

The Comets are hoping that philosophy wins Thursday in a match of contrasting styles.

Laredo features one radiant player – ranked in the top-500 of all North American Valorant players – that they rely upon heavily. Conner said he's an impressive player, but a one-person team is vulnerable.

"We're kind of expecting the game to be played around that player," he said. "We're trying to figure out ways to shut them down."

The winner of Thursday night's match plays the winner of Columbia Basin College and Northeastern Oklahoma.

The Comets are ready for Laredo, but know to advance to nationals they need to be their best selves.

"I think we'll play how we want to play," Conner said. "We'll play our own game."

WIT plays Laredo in a best-of-three match at 8 p.m. on Thursday, which will be streamed on Twitch.