{"id":6010,"date":"2020-01-24T12:22:19","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T17:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=6010"},"modified":"2020-01-24T12:22:36","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T17:22:36","slug":"florida-southern-joins-peach-belt-conference-as-esports-associate-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2020\/01\/24\/florida-southern-joins-peach-belt-conference-as-esports-associate-member\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Southern Joins Peach Belt Conference as Esports Associate Member"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Florida Southern College esports has joined as an esports associate member of the Peach Belt Conference and will compete in the 2020 Peach Belt League of Legends season, the conference announced on Thursday afternoon. Florida Southern is joined by Henderson State as the newest associate members of the Peach Belt Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“We are honored to welcome Florida Southern to our conference for esports,” Peach Belt Conference commissioner David Brunk said. “After speaking with president Dr. Anne Kerr and director of athletics and dean of wellness Drew Howard, I know that the PBC and FSC will be a good fit for one another. We look forward to the Mocs being a key part of our league as they compete for a championship this season.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are excited to join the Peach Belt Conference as this is the logical next step in the progression of our esports program,” Howard said. “We look forward to competing against the best League of Legends teams in the country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Moccasins are one of six esports associate members, which includes Henderson State, Alma, Coker, Hawaii-Pacific and Montevallo. Peach Belt Conference members Columbus State, Georgia College, Young Harris, Clayton State, Augusta, North Georgia, Flagler, Young Harris, Georgia Southwestern and Lander complete the field of 16 for League of Legends competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are honored to be given the opportunity to represent Florida Southern College in the Peach Belt Conference,” head coach Nate Carson said. “We cannot wait to show off the incredible esports talent we have on our campus and on our League of Legends team. It’s going to be a season to remember.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Peach Belt Conference currently only sponsors League of Legends competition. Entering its third year of sponsorship, the PBC was the first conference in the nation to recognize esports as a league championship event and treat it the same as other sponsored sports.  The Peach Belt Conference was also the first to enter into a partnership with Riot Games (publisher of League of Legends) and to hold an in-person live championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Joining the Peach Belt conference, along with increasing our practice time, will allow our team to improve and perform at a higher level,” team captain Will ‘Nim’ James said. “I’m proud of what we have accomplished this far, and am looking forward to how we will grow as a team this semester.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mocs kick off the season on Feb. 1 when they face USC Aiken. The Moccasins will play a total of 15 regular-season games, with the top eight teams advancing to the live tournament from March 27-28 at Lander University in Greenwood, S.C. A full schedule can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida Southern College esports has joined as an esports associate member of the Peach Belt Conference and will compete in the 2020 Peach Belt League of Legends season, the conference… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"19","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fsc-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}