PRESCOTT, Ariz. – Head Coach Kevin Lewis has been at the helm of the Yavapai College E-Sports program for just over two years and is set to lead the Roughriders in their third official regular season in the spring of 2024. 

After being hired in December of 2021, Lewis went to work and began to build up his program from the ground up. Already competing in a state-of-the-art E-Sports arena, Lewis began in the spring of 2022 with one student-athlete competing in just one game. 

During the 2022-23 competition year, Lewis competed in the fall and spring seasons and had 10-plus student-athletes competing in three games, culminating in a Hearthstone National Championship in the spring of 2023. 

Now embarking on his third season, Lewis recently saw his squad earn its most unlikely accomplishment to date in the fall of 2023. 

Heading into the 2023-24 competition year, the YC E-Sports program was set to compete in five different games with more than 15 student-athletes in the program. Such numbers gave Lewis the freedom to go to a more traditional competition schedule: the fall serving as the offseason and the spring serving as the regular season. 

The YC Rocket League team, however, planned to use the NJCAA E-Sports Open Division (open to anyone associated with the college) in the fall of 2023 as their offseason scrimmages to get ready for the regular season in the spring. 

That team consisted of Daniel Lanier, Bishop Rhoads, Jericho Nucum and Ryan Gardner. The Rocket League quartet didn't start out together and instead, came together late in the season and jelled rather quickly. 

"We didn't even have a team at the beginning of the semester," said Lewis when asked about the season. "We had Daniel and then we added Bishop and then we added Jericho and Ryan around November. Surprisingly, they worked together really well and got hot and just kept winning." 

The patched-together team of Lanier, Rhoads, Nucum and Gardner entered the playoffs with a 6-4 record and started the 23-team single-elimination tournament with a 4-0 win against Walters State Community College. 

In the second round of the playoffs, the Roughriders earned another sweep, this time over one of the two teams from Daytona State College, to advance to the semifinals against the University of South Carolina Sumter. 

USCS went 6-1 during the regular season and earned the No. 2 seed in the tournament while being favored to defeat the Roughriders. YC, however, kept the aforementioned hot streak going and advanced to the finals with a 4-2 win over USCS. 

In the finals, YC capped off its unlikely run with a 4-1 victory over Daytona State's second team to clinch the NJCAA E-Sports Open Division Rocket League Championship. 

"We started off rough, but we rode to the finish line strong," said Lanier when asked about winning the championship. 

Lewis and the Roughriders will look to add their third championship to the stellar program in the spring of 2024.