Belmont Opens New Esports Facility

Students gaming in the esports lounge, Nick Rampe

Belmont’s new multifaceted esports facility officially opened for students on Thursday.  

The room, located on the first floor of the newly built Wiseman Hall, features a variety of options for students to play video games, watch TV or simply enjoy the space. The facility features 25 gaming PCs and ten 80-inch TVs.  

“For a lot of the gamers, they are only gaming in their rooms. With this community, we wanted to get them out of their rooms and to provide a space for them to be able to congregate and to actually play their games in person,” said Jamie Zeller, assistant dean of students and director of fitness and recreation.  

Belmont FitRec employees working in the facility can take a player’s screen and display it on one of the large TVs, allowing the entirety of the room to watch along—a feature that will be used during large gaming events. 

“This is probably the best job ever. I literally watch people play games and just hang out and watch people,” said Alyson Young, a student-worker. “This is better than what I thought it was going to be.” 

While student-workers enjoyed their first day on the job, students were taking in the atmosphere of the room. 

“It’s crazy. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it to be this big,” said Malachi Nichols, a Belmont student. “With all the lights, it pops from the second you walk in.” 

Prior to the facility’s official opening, it was used by the U.S. Army’s esports team. The team’s facility in Fort Knox needed maintenance, and it reached out to Belmont in the meantime. 

“They were needing a place to practice before they headed to an event, and we needed a group to test our systems,” said Zeller. “We’ve had them rotate through computers, testing peripherals, testing connections and just troubleshooting a lot of the issues that we have before we opened for Belmont students.” 

Though the systems were battle-tested by an official esports team, the facility is primarily planned for use by casual audiences with occasional competitive events hosted in the venue. 

“This room will provide a really good opportunity for anybody that’s interested in gaming,” said Zeller. “We’ve wanted to do this for several years, and it finally came together with the construction of Wiseman Hall.”

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This article was written by Nick Rampe