T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — From left to right, Marshalltown Community College (MCC) eSports coaches Max Pietrzak and Andrew Goforth, players Elijah Powell, Paul Novotny and Christopher Ramirez and Coach Nate Rodemeyer pose for a photo outside of the eSports lab on campus after recently wrapping up their successful spring season with a number of national championships.

Now in its third year of existence, the Marshalltown Community College (MCC) eSports team has enjoyed great success under the leadership of coaches Nate Rodemeyer, Andrew Goforth and Max Pietrzak. The spring 2025 semester was no exception as the Tigers brought home more national hardware.

“We won two games that we’ve never won before, and they’re two really big titles. We won Super Smash Brothers 1v1. The big deal there is it is the biggest game in our league in collegiate eSports. There are over 700 students that compete in that game, so getting a win in that title was absolutely massive,” Goforth said. “We also brought home a win in Valorant, which is a new title for us. This is our first year competing in Valorant in the NJCAAE (National Junior College Athletic Association eSports), and that’s really a big Triple A eSports title. Getting a win in any game like that is huge.”

Additionally, the team picked up more titles in Overwatch and Mario Kart, with the Overwatch team winning its fourth consecutive championship — for three of the five members of the team, it means they won the national title during all four of their semesters at MCC. Elijah Powell and Paul Novotny were proud of the fact that the Overwatch unit went undefeated this spring.

“We lost one point on one map, I’m pretty sure. The rest of it was just, like, we had a really good team. It was fun,” said Powell, who has future aspirations to become an eSports coach down the line.

A coach of that team, Samuel Geller, commented on the “excellent” foundation left by those who have come before and how this group built on it.

“Basically, I was focused on nothing but building on the fundamentals of the game (and) ensuring that I could work with every player individually to maximize their performance and then help them synergize as best as they can. For me, the highlights have been working with players that are so driven and so passionate and so focused on just improving that they’ve been able to beat out teams and players which, maybe on paper, should be even or better (than them),” he said. “They’ve beaten out teams and handily beaten some teams with phenomenal players, and I think we came into this fall season a little mucky, a little rusty, but I think the key standout for me was that once playoffs started, it was like a fire got lit underneath the team and these guys just started absolutely dominating and taking home the win in such a convincing fashion. It felt awesome, and then this season, we were just undefeated. We were unstoppable. I think those are some of the big highlights.”

Shontario Dudley, who won the prestigious Smash title and prefers to play as Dr. Mario, plans to transfer to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and hopes to continue his eSports career there.

“I talked to the coaches and the players there, and they really seemed like they were playing the game for the love of the game and not something super serious, which is something I kind of want — something that’s not super serious, but something I can still try hard (on) if I need to,” he said.

Christopher Ramirez, a member of the Valorant team, is planning to move on to Iowa State University and study engineering, but he said that if another school would take him for eSports, he’d be willing to go. Pietrzak noted the “incredible” success of the Smash team, which included six of the top 24 competitors in the entire Division II league.

“Having ¼ of the bracket be MCC was insane. We got number one, three, five, 10, I don’t even know anymore. We dominated the league pretty well,” he said.

The coaching staff has continued to build on its success and recruit new players to the fold — which, of course, is ever important at a two-year school — and Goforth reflected on cycling through the first recruited generation.

“We’re losing a ton of talent and great people, but I think that we’re gonna be good to go. As soon as these new recruits come in and they get acclimated, I think we’re gonna be in a similar spot to where we were, but (we) cannot replace the graduating class that we have,” he said.

The team has also drawn a mix of local players from high schools like Marshalltown, East Marshall and South Tama and some from other parts of the states.

“To reiterate, we’re losing basically the entire Overwatch roster and pretty much the entire varsity Smash roster, so those are gonna be hard resets for those games specifically,” Rodemeyer said.