HUNTINGDON, Pa. (WTAJ) — Five days a week, you’ll find the Juniata College esports team social distanced in their facility on campus.

“Basically, everyone on the A-team plays more than those 10 hours a week to prepare,” said Malcolm MacDermid, Team Captain of the Juniata College esports League of Legends team.

Founded in 2019, the Juniata esports team competes against teams from all over the country, in a game called “League of Legends,” a battle arena game.

There are five players that compete from each team in a best of three format.

“The whole goal is to try and accumulate gold, to buy items and to destroy the enemy base to ultimately win the game,” MacDermid continued.

Now, fresh off their conference championship win, the team has begun preparing for a national tournament, where they’ll compete against schools from all over the country.

“There’s been a couple of hiccups here and there, but for the most part we went through conference play pretty seamlessly, we beat everybody without much of a hitch,” Alex Kurtz, Head Coach of the Juniata College esports League of Legends Team, said.

“We ran through playoffs and beat Goucher in the playoffs.”

The Juniata College esports team won’t have to travel far to compete in the national tournament. In fact, they’ll be competing at their on-campus facility.

“We’ve played all of our games from here, from the facility,” MacDermid said.

“Coming in this year, they knew things were going to be a little bit different because of COVID regulations, Plexiglas between all of the rigs, before we did that we actually had to distance them,” Kurtz added.

They’ll compete in their first match of the national tournament on May 2, against Purdue University.