Esports: Jerdack stands out with confidence as a first-year player

Justin Herold
Thu, 24 Dec 2020 00:52:44 +0000
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First-year DPS player Anthony Jerdack is a member of the Ohio State Overwatch premier team. Credit: Courtesy of Anthony Jerdack

Anthony Jerdack has only been a Buckeye for one semester, but he’s already making his mark on the Ohio State Overwatch scarlet team.?

Jerdack, a first-year DPS player for the premier Overwatch scarlet team, also known as “Performance,” came into Ohio State’s Overwatch tryouts as a peak 100 player in North America in competitive play.

“For me it was a thing I felt like I just kind of had to go through,” Jerdack said. “I know it sounds kind of cocky but overall I knew I’d end up playing for Ohio State. It was a good process overall.”

During the process of trying out, other prospects and eventual teammates realized the level of play Jerdack brought to the game.?

“I didn’t know much about Anthony going into tryouts,” Justin Yancey, the primary tank on the gray team, said. “From tryouts I just knew he was the best player on the team, I could just tell that pretty easily. Just because in tryouts if your team had Anthony, you were winning that match. He was just that good even in that preliminary part of it.”

Since the formation of both teams, players have been switched in and out for one another in hopes of building the best two teams possible. Jerdack, along with a few others, remained a consistent part of the scarlet team, which is essentially the “A” team among the two.?

Not only has Jerdack been consistent in his spot on the team throughout the fall semester, but he has also been consistent with his playmaking ability that is typically spotlighted at the DPS position.?

“I’ll always speak to consistency and his bad days are still better than most people’s good days,” Lucas Lumbra, an analyst/coach for the Overwatch premier team, said. “That just shows. When we need him most in matches where maps are close or against teams that we need him to show up against, he’s proved he’s able to.”

Jerdack said Overwatch was just a game he played for fun up until three months before he tried out for the Buckeyes, and since then he has been touted as a great mechanical player in Overwatch by teammates and coaches alike.

“It’s like in basketball like he’s got a real nice shot, he has great machines,” Yancey said. “If you watch clips of him, his reflexes are incredible, hand-eye coordination, he’s able to be pin-point accurate in a lot of really tough situations. That’s not something everyone can do.”

Due to his tremendous skill at a young age, Jerdack said he has already given the idea of playing professionally some thought, but he said he is unsure if he’s ready to commit to the game long term.??

Despite being so talented and skilled at the game already on his own, Jerdack has been able to gather new experiences and learn more about playing with a team in a collegiate style of play.

“Before I was a competitive player, I didn’t have much knowledge of team play or how to work as a team competitively,” Jerdack said. “ So when you get on a team, you learn better of how to play around your teammates and not how to play for your own value. It’s a lot more of ‘How can I help my team win?’ and ‘How can I create the best opportunities for my teammates or capitalize off of my teammates rather than figuring out what I need to do personally?’”