Rocket League Huskies claim NACE Starleague Western Conference Championship
The Keyano Huskies Rocket League team have brought home another top achievement for the program, capturing the 2022 Western Conference Championship in National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) Starleague action.
Guiding the Rocket League Huskies were the team of Brayden Dang (Bang / Waterloo, Ont.), Jared Greenwood (Vitali / Tilbury, Ont.) and Conner McGlennan (V0ltss. / Ajax, Ont.).
“It was really big for us,” Head Coach Ben Bramly said. “We had obviously won all our regular season matches; we went 8-0 in the regular season so we knew we were the favourites going into that championship.
“To pull out the win and solidify our spot at the top in that division was really good for the guys.”
Following a perfect regular season, the Huskies matched up against their geographical rivals from the University of Alberta Saturday afternoon, engineering a reverse sweep to claim the crown in the best-of-five series.
Game One was claimed by Alberta 13 seconds into overtime, resulting in a 2-1 victory. Another one goal-game featured in Game Two, with Alberta earning the 3-2 win.
That’s where their success stopped and the Huskies’ success began.
In Game Three, a hat trick by Dang spurred the Huskies to a 4-1 win with McGlennan also scoring. Game Four was a 4-0 shutout as McGlennan scored twice, with single strikes from Dang and Greenwood.
The fifth-and-deciding match would be pushed into overtime where Dang scored 3:31 into overtime to collect his second goal of the match and the 3-2 victory. McGlennan also scored in the match.
“At the end it felt great,” Bramly said. “For the 30 minutes going through it, it was pretty stressful. I’m really proud of them despite starting off slow, going down 0-2 in a best-of-five series, not giving up and taking it a game at a time and winning each game.
“Finally grabbing the win was pretty big.”
Dang finished the series with six goals while McGlennan had five to his credit. Greenwood added a pair of goals as well.
Already qualified for the NACE Starleague Championship, a 32-team tournament, the Huskies will now hold the seventh seed among all teams. In a funny cincidence, they've been slotted against the University of Alberta, seeded 26th, in the second round of tournament action.
Action is scheduled to begin Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. MT and is tentatively scheduled to be broadcast on the Huskies’ Twitch stream. Follow them at https://www.twitch.tv/keyanoesports for all the action as it happens.