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MTSU student Zak Sohrabi wins regional Red Bull gaming tournament





Middle Tennessee State University eSports Club Vice-President Zak Sohrabi competed for 18 rounds over seven hours to win a League of Legends regional event recently. He advanced to the national qualifier scheduled for November.KEN COOPER

Middle Tennessee State University eSports Club Vice-President Zak Sohrabi competed for 18 rounds over seven hours to win a League of Legends regional event recently. He advanced to the national qualifier scheduled for November.KEN COOPER

Middle Tennessee State University student Zak Sohrabi snagged the top spot in a regional video game competition and will now compete in the national qualifier this November.

The 18-year-old battled last month against 70 other remote competitors from Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana. After about seven hours of gameplay and 18-rounds of League of Legends, he was able to come out on top.

“It was really unexpected. I didn’t go into expecting anything,” said Sohrabi, who plays under the screen name “Voxcrik.”

In the game, players navigate a diamond-shaped map of a land called Summoner’s Rift that has three paths to explore in hopes of destroying the opponent’s Nexus, which Sohrabi compared to “taking over someone’s castle.” In-game obstacles as well as other players are the challenge.

He described the final round as “really tense.”

Usually, the game is played in teams of five, but the Red Bull Solo Q competition is played one-on-one.

Middle Tennessee State University student Zak Sohrabi didn’t expect to win a seven-hour League of Legends video game regional competition. “I went into it purely just going in for the participation award,” said Sohrabi referring to the university’s eSports Club. He is the club’s vice-president. Sohrabi received a spot in the national competition in November.KEN COOPER

Middle Tennessee State University student Zak Sohrabi didn’t expect to win a seven-hour League of Legends video game regional competition. “I went into it purely just going in for the participation award,” said Sohrabi referring to the university’s eSports Club. He is the club’s vice-president. Sohrabi received a spot in the national competition in November.KEN COOPER

“We all just played 1v1 matches for ladder play and then it went to brackets and then best of threes and best of fives,” said Sohrabi, who is keeping track of his future competitors’ wins for the national competition scheduled for Nov. 20.

There are about 140 League Champion characters available, but Sohrabi most often plays as “Camille,” a human-robot hybrid with knives for legs.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on that and have been trying to come up with some new solutions for tactics,” said Sohrabi of the 15 other regional winners. “It’s still four months away. I’m not too stressed about it currently.”

Between rounds, there would be a few minutes of downtime as each player waited to be matched up with their next opponent.

Sohrabi credits his older half-brothers Matthew and Chris Randal for introducing him to the world of gaming. A recent conversation with his father revealed that the interest had taken shape during his toddler days.

“I would have to stand on chairs to see computer screens, like monitors and stuff,” said Sohrabi on his 2000s childhood pastime of playing MapleStory, a multi-player, online game. “My earliest memory is probably like standing on a chair to play on a laptop.”

The collegiate impact

Sohrabi is now the vice-president of MTSU’s eSports Club. One of his incentives to participate in the League of Legends was the opportunity to earn $2,000 in funding for having the most club members sign-up for the competition.

Sohrabi said the eSports Club President Evan Snyder and Club Competition Officer Ben Nelms urged members to get involved.

He said the club uses a couple of online portals to monitor its number of members. The university-exclusive portal has approximately 200 members. The non-university portal hosted through Discord, a social media server primarily used by gamers, has amassed about 700 members. Of that crowd, Sohrabi said he would estimate that about 400 to 500 members attend MTSU.

Despite the club’s triple-digit membership, Sohrabi said there are still stigmas surrounding the gaming community from outsiders who may not be as interested in sports played behind a screen.

“Gaming has always been seen as much more of a hobby, if that, and it’s always been seen as a very childish thing, for lack of a better word. It’s never really been seen as a professional hobby or anything that you would participate in when you get older,” said Sohrabi, who hopes to see it taken more seriously. “It’s still something that takes a lot of effort and a lot of mental fortitude in a lot of ways. I do wish that it got a little bit more respect.”

While he’s optimistic for the future of gaming, the newness and uncertainty of career opportunities in this field are a couple of reasons Sohrabi doesn’t plan to put all of his eggs in one basket.

This fall the Franklin native will be entering his sophomore year (junior year by credit hours) as a physics and math double major. He plans to enter graduate school to become a professor after receiving his bachelor’s degree in 2024.

While his STEM-based academic interests and screen-based extracurricular activity capture his interest for different reasons, he can see an overlap in one area: optimization.

He made a comparison to students building their foundational skills in a classroom to learn new ways to approach and solve an equation.

“In video games, there may be this solution that you learn from the tutorials, but then as you start getting more creative with all the various possibilities in the game, there are really good opportunities to come up with really creative solutions to those problems,” said Sohrabi. “Multiple different solutions means there’s a lot of different ways to find the best thing and finding the best thing is what I really like doing.”

Right now, he tutors and conducts research for the physics department at MTSU. He’s also involved with the Astronomy Club and the Society for Physics Students outside of his gaming endeavors.

“If I’m not playing games, I’m probably doing work. Gaming is my main hobby because it’s also how I socialize in a lot of ways. A lot of my friends also play games, so it’s something I do on my own time, but it’s also something I do with friends,” said Sohrabi, who previously played for the MTSU collegiate team.

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