- Andy Collins is a Valorant esports athlete in its Challengers League.
- An esports collegiate scholarship paid for most of his undergraduate and master’s degrees.
- After working from 8 am to 5 pm, he practices and strategizes with his team for four hours.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Andy Collins, a 26-year-old software engineer from Chicago pursuing a professional esports career playing the first-person shooting game Valorant. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Decades ago, it seemed like every American child wanted to become an astronaut after seeing the United States’ rapid progress in the space race.
My aspirations were a little bit different. As a kid, I grew up playing video games with my dad, later moving on to playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a globally popular first-person shooter where I competed online with friends.
It didn’t take a man to walk on the moon to convince me of my future in high school. But when I started seeing people making a living playing video games professionally in high school? That was my astronaut moment. That’s when I knew I wanted to compete at the highest level.
With a clear goal, I set my sights on improving my skills within the game, eventually receiving a scholarship to play for Robert Morris University. Being a professional esports competitor wasn’t the most well-known or traditional career path at the time. My friends didn’t really seem to care that much until the streaming platform, Twitch, grew in popularity, and with it, interest in competitive esports.
Being on a collegiate roster, I always had to perform at my best, even with a grueling schedule. I would’ve lost valuable scholarship money if I had been demoted from the starting roster.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen,…
