Northeastern’s esports program is a success, but the program director wants to take things to the next level. Turbessi talks about leading and coaching esports athletes, and whether he still has any time to game himself.
John Turbessi joined Northeastern University as its coordinator of esports and club sports in January, overseeing Northeastern’s five competitive gaming teams and nine club teams. In 2020, Northeastern became one of the first Division 1 schools in the country to create a varsity esports program.
Turbessi launched his esports career at the University of South Florida where, in 2020, he began as a player and caster, the esports equivalent of a commentator. He later became the program’s first program assistant and talent development specialist, guiding the program’s future at a higher level.
Turbessi sat down with Northeastern Global News to talk about running a D1 esports program, how to coach an esports team, how the program is leveling up and if he still has any time to play video games himself. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Seeing our teams win is the easy answer. It’s always great to see Huskies winning. But I think what I enjoy even more than that is when the players are in our facility [SquashBusters Esports Lab instead of on their home setups and I can see them popping off during that win. We’re creating the opportunity for them to connect as athletes and have that real experience where you’re fist bumping each other as you’re next to each other, where you’re popping off, you’re patting your teammates on the back. That’s the best part for sure. It’s very rewarding just to see them having that student athlete experience that our program really wants to offer.
The best way to think about esports coaching as it relates to traditional coaching is in terms of a mental coach and in terms of an offensive strategy and defensive strategy coach.
A lot of the time when it’s in games, it’s more of being that mental coach and checking in with the players because we’re not allowed in-game coaching. We are only allowed 60-second timeouts, two of them per game, and then pre-round and halftime and halftime is only 45 seconds. So, it’s mostly “Hey, I noticed this thing is happening” or “This is a breakdown of communication I’m noticing.”
It’s been so many moments where we’re right on the cusp of that big moment. I think this next year we’re going to have structure starting in September. [My position] was vacant for that time, so there weren’t some of these additional guardrails being placed for our students at the beginning of the year.
[The “Rocket League”] team had only been practicing together for three months, if that. … Going into this next year where we have that time and we have that really strong new player on a team that is only growing week to week, I think we’re going to have that big moment when it comes to our “Rocket League” team potentially taking down a [University of] Akron or a Ball State that’s in the top two.
The thing is, and this is part of why I stay so stuck in esports, whenever I start watching esports again, it makes me want to play the game. So, now that I’ve taken on a more active role with the “Valorant” team, it’s like I want to play “Valorant.”
There’s that, but then sometimes when I’m playing those games, I notice that I start thinking about them in a work context now. Now that it’s more of my job, I’ve started to slow down and walk it back. … I’ve definitely started tearing through a lot of fiction this year, which has been great.