New Schedule and Grand Opening

Howdy all, my name is Peter Quinn and this is the CWU for October 8th, 2023! These are supposed to be weekly updates and we will be rectifying that over the next few weeks, so my apologies for missing a couple. As for this newsletter update, we’ll go over our grand opening process, the new schedule, some of our new programs, letting you know when and where to sign up for them as well as some policy changes. Hope you are all enjoying the cooler weather as we transition into some prime gaming months, so stick around and I hope to see you all back here next week! Let’s get started! 

First up I do want to apologize properly for the missed weeks, we got extremely busy with the Southington close which happened without a lot of notice. To be clear, Southington will no longer have in person Club Esports.  Some more casual gaming programs will be done by Tyler through fast camps but no official announcement on that has been made yet (check back here in the coming months for updates on that). As for now we will be moving all of our in-person and remote practices to our new Wilton Facility and Schedule. 

This schedule will begin to go into effect at the end of October, with open sessions for Y and non Y members alike until then. That means we will be hosting in person open sessions for free, showing off the new space and getting everyone oriented to our new system until the end of October. We are planning for a Grand Opening ceremony and in-house tournament sometime in November, but until then feel free to come check us out before November 1st to play for free on our brand new computers! 

With our schedule going into full effect in November I wanted to clarify that we are also working with the Wilton YMCA and running our registration process through them. Members of the Wilton Y will receive a discount on programming of any type as well as gaining access to a very nice facility with multiple pools, courts, full gym, and much much more! Right now we are currently reworking our registration page so please be patient as we correct some items, but the page will still be here https://www.wiltonymca.org/ctea/ with a link at the bottom to sign up when everything is ready. Expect a notice in next week's update about the registration page being up and running! 

I do want to take the time to set our policy on remote practices clear as well. We do prefer in person gaming, the benefits of playing side by side and now with our in person coaches, that is our preferred attendance, however there is no issue with remote play for both practices and matches. We are currently in the off season for VHEL, so no official matches will occur until much later in the fall, but even so we won’t need to be in person unless a LAN specific event happens, and we will contact everyone far in advance to coordinate travel for those events (as well as to get everyone geared up with official CT Storm gear). So for our remote gamers feel free to sign up for the practices as well but we do hope to see you in person if possible. 

Lastly I wanted to point out our new schedule has two After School Programs, designed to get kids into the STEM field with engaging and fun Coding and Computer Hardware classes. Whether you are thinking about a Computer Science degree in the future or just interested in the language and function of computers, these classes are here to help you get a leg up on learning with interactive lessons based in gaming that you do everyday. So stop on by and learn a thing or two about computers, inside and out, with our new after school activities!  

That’s going to be it for our weekly update (which by this time next week will genuinely be weekly). A big thank you to everyone behind the scenes such as our very own  Adam Culver who has been making this site (both online and at Wilton) look amazing and preparing for our official opening. Thank you to everyone who has been showing interest in our programs and we hope to be back to our regularly scheduled gaming very soon! Don’t forget to wear your seatbelt and I’ll see you all back here next week with updates on our discord, registration page, and more on our programs at our new facility. Here’s a sneak peak of how it’s looking!