The University of Wisconsin-Platteville has recently welcomed their newest esports team on campus. This new group is the Rainbow Six Siege team. This team currently has 24 members who participate in everything from friendly games to college vs. college competitions.

The Rainbow Six Siege team has been together for a month, and they have been working hard learning about each other and becoming a team. The first weeks weren’t perfect by any means. The team lacked communication skills and competitive game knowledge, making playing together tough; but this has quickly been changing with the days passing.

Team member Jake Hoffmann said, “We have been doing a great job over the past weeks learning to play together as a team. We now know how we all play and it has greatly improved our team as a whole.” The team has so far played two games against Madison. In the first game, they only managed to win one round. The second time they played Madison, only several days later they managed to win three, which shows the vast improvement day to day. 

The team has been playing other colleges as well in the past weeks. They have been playing more experienced schools such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Virginia Tech and Ohio State. The Rainbow Six Siege team’s next game is coming up on Friday, Nov. 12 against the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Playing against these bigger and more experienced schools is tough for a starter team such as Platteville’s, which is why the team has been off to a slow start this season.

Team captain Eric Sorensen said, “Just because they are a bigger school doesn’t mean they’re better at the game. My experience with Madison is that they don’t know how to play the game, but they’re just mechanically better than us.” Madison has been playing with the same team for two years now, which makes their performance seamless. As a new team, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Rainbow Six Siege team lacks this skill, but it is undoubtedly in the works. 

With this being a brand new team there has been a struggle to find new players to get a larger roster. In the start, they increased quickly and gained a lot of interest, but after the initial week or two, things slowed down substantially. 

When asked about this, President Jaxon Hafenbreald said “publicity has been a huge problem; due to the lack of funding and the struggle to have a big voice.” The lack of players has made it tough to keep a solid team going that is always ready to play. Nonetheless, they have done an impressive job making the best of what they have. 

The University of Wisconsin Platteville’s new team has had a solid start that has sadly been slowed. The team must face more experienced schools with years of practice together. Through it all, the Rainbow Six Siege team has managed to persevere through these struggles and develop an encouraging team atmosphere for all of those involved.