As we are nearly two months into the fall 2025 SUNY Canton Esports season, the Roos have numerous teams competing in both ECAC and SUNY league action. The teams have combined for over 60 wins and while most events take place with teams competing remotely against each other from their campuses, one SUNY Canton team recently had the opportunity to take part in an in-person event at Syracuse University.
SUNY Canton's Overwatch A team competed at a collegiate esports event hosted by Syracuse University, marking an important milestone in the program's ongoing rebuild. Over the past two years, the roster has undergone major restructuring following the graduation of previous senior players. Under the guidance of Coach Austin Kubo and leadership from team captain John Yunger, the roster has developed into a cohesive new lineup.
Overwatch 2 is a 5v5 first-person hero shooter game where teams compete to complete various objectives, such as capturing points, escorting a payload, defending hybrid maps, or pushing a barrier. Each team is made up of one Tank, two Damage heroes, and two Supports. With a roster of over 40 unique heroes, players can choose characters whose abilities best help their team achieve victory.
Heading into the event at Syracuse, SUNY Canton was favored in their opening match against SUNY Poly, but nerves on stage made it difficult for the team to find their rhythm on Day 1. They fell to SUNY Poly and Syracuse Academy but pushed Alvernia College to a close 3–2 series. The tournament featured strong competition overall, including top-ranked programs such as Penn State and Syracuse University's Varsity team.
On Day 2, SUNY Canton faced Syracuse Varsity, ending their tournament run with a 1–3 overall record. Despite the setbacks, the team used the experience as a learning opportunity. Their growth was quickly put on display shortly after the event, when they faced SUNY Poly again in ECAC play – this time securing an impressive 3–1 victory.
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Gallery: (11-13-2025) Overwatch 2 Fall 25
Following the event, we caught up with Kubo and Yunger to talk both about the in-person event and their season so far.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the in-person event the team participated in at Syracuse University on October 25th and 26th. What was that experience like participating in an in-person event vs. the normal weekly ECAC & SUNY matches that are predominantly online or in the SUNY Canton Esports Arena?
Austin Kubo: For the whole team it was their first land event they had got to be in. It was a big change of experience being able to play in person with all the other teams around us and made the energy and stakes feel so much higher. It was a crazy experience getting to play both in this environment and to see how all the other teams handle the high stakes.
John Yunger: To be fair, that was actually my second land event, as I have been to one in Boise State, Idaho. That was during the summer of 2022, it was for about five days, and it was hosted by a private organization. It still was a really cool experience to go to Syracuse, and it definitely runs a lot different from the matches we do here.
Q: How do you keep your team motivated and focused during the matches?
Austin Kubo: A lot of the time it's kind of working towards the bottom line. If you have four people that are ready to give it their all and have good attitudes and one person who is not quite there, it's going to hurt the entire team. It's all about making sure all five players are putting in energy and effort because when they do, they are able to bounce off of each other and go even higher than that.
Q: How has playing for SUNY Canton's Overwatch 2 team impacted you?
John Yunger: When I first started here, I definitely was a bit different. I was not exactly a team player, and I had the mindset of "I'll do everything myself". I didn't like to rely on others so much, but after playing the game for so long and being a part of the team, you learn to talk and work with other people. I realized that I can't do everything myself and that it's okay. It has not only helped me to become a better team player, but a more functioning member of society.
Q: How does your team prepare for the next game after finishing the previous one?
Austin Kubo: A lot of the time in between maps, we will go over the little things to try and adjust off the fly. Since we are in-between maps, we don't really want to discuss anything map specific because we don't have the immediate knowledge of what map we'll be put into. We try to make little adjustments and patch up any weak spots for the rest of the set. After the sets are finished, we will review those and figure out what we need to work on.
Q: What role/hero do you play in Overwatch 2?
John Yunger: For all five semesters I have been a tank player, and when I got here, I started with Diva. I used to exclusively play that hero which made my hero pool very limited. When Overwatch 2 had come out, I realized I must pick up on other tanks or else I would fall behind. Just recently, about a semester or two ago, I had begun to gravitate away from Diva and towards Mauga. He has now been my go-to tank, but I still have others to choose from if need be. My goal isn't to play every tank, but to be able to play a good cast of tanks.
Q: How did you become the Overwatch 2 Coach?
Austin Kubo: So, I went to SUNY Canton for about a year, and I played on the Overwatch team as just a player. I almost immediately became the team leader, running the team how I wanted to. Before SUNY Canton, I had a lot of experience in playing games like Overwatch and Paladin at a really high level. So, when I jumped into collegiate, I was able to wrangle the team together and get them in a good direction. When I eventually left SUNY Canton, the administrator at the time had reached out to me to offer me the paid coach position for Overwatch. He felt like I had a ton of experience with this kind of work, and ever since then I have been coaching for Canton.
Q: What is one strategy your team has taken advantage of this season and has that made a big impact on performance?
Austin Kubo: We have been working on a new comp that has Mauga, Life Weaver, and Wuyang. How it works is we create a fake engagement by sending the Mauga to charge the enemy team, eat a bunch of resources, but instead of using them we have the Life Weaver pull them out of the fight. Now that the other team has low resources, we can set up for our actual play.
John Yunger: In terms of out of the game, not only do we practice about two hours before the game starts, but we also take about 15 minutes before the match to bond. A lot of the time we watch videos online to get us all happy and spending time together.
Q: What has been your favorite team moment/highlight so far this season?
Austin Kubo: This will probably be both of our favorite moment, but when we went to the Syracuse event, we had lost to SUNY Poly. Since that event, our team made it our goal to become better and work harder together to double our efforts in the future. We had participated in scrimmages, and we were matched up against SUNY Poly again in an online match, and after giving it our all we had beaten them 3-2. It felt so rewarding to be able to have that revenge map after losing at the land event and we had proved that our efforts were worth it.
John Yunger: I agree a lot with what Austin said, winning our run back against SUNY Poly in the ECAC league was my favorite highlight so far.
