Programs Begin November 1st!

Howdy, howdy, howdy! Another Sunday and another CTEA Weekly Update, and on the heels of our successful Open House week. It was a lot of fun to meet many of you for the first time and finally get to see the space be used. As amazing as this week was, we have a lot more fun planned for everyone, so let’s turn our attention from our first open house to our first official month of programming! This newsletter will cover our new discount policy, slight schedule changes, and ways for you to help CTEA become the best that it can be. Without further ado, let’s hop into some updates!

I wanted to start off by saying thank you to everyone who participated in our open house this week. It was great to show off the space and play games with a lot of you. We’ve decided for the month of November to allow free admission to our social clubs, so come by for open PC time from 4:00 - 5:00pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This is a great way to meet new people, test out our facility, and game to your heart's content. We also want to remind everyone of our Open PC Time on Fridays from 5:00 - 6:00pm every week, making Fridays a two hour window. However, if you want to reserve your spot (space is limited to 13) we’ll be giving priority to those who sign up for social clubs through the YMCA, so check out the YMCA website to sign up and make sure your spot is reserved ahead of time.

I also wanted to give a shoutout to all of the gamers that came by during the open house. The skill level was much higher than I expected, so I would like to remind everyone that our CT Storm teams are your one stop shop for taking your skill to the next level and proving who the best is, on the national level. Our coaches will work with you whether you are fresh to the game or a lifelong veteran, to get better and improve for our spring season, where we’ll take our esports teams and face off against teams from around the country. To see what games we have and our schedule of when the practices for CT Storm occur, check out our programs page at https://www.ctesportsacademy.com/programs

Speaking of schedule, I wanted to announce the slight change we’ve made to our Thursday schedule. We are switching around our times for Computers 101 and Coding Class to provide some variety of times for people. We’re making this change based on suggestions from some of the participants in our programs so let’s talk about feedback!

Going into our first month of programming here at the YMCA, we want to hear from you! Your feedback is very valued and we will always try to make our programs better based on that. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for programs please let us know by filling out a form in our About section of our website. We would also like to hear from you if you're interested in a program but have a time conflict. When we hear a lot of people are busy with another activity, that can lead to us adjusting our time slots so that everyone can participate. We are working with the YMCA to try and put together the best experience for our gamers and that includes the community as well. So be vocal, let us know how we can help you learn coding, computer hardware, get better at gaming, and expand your gaming portfolio and social network!

We also wanted to announce our discount information, which will be for Y and non Y members alike. We’ll manually put a 25% discount onto any subsequent programs you sign up for through the YMCA. If this isn’t reflected on your side please reach out to peter@ctesportsacademy.com and we’ll double check and verify that it has been applied. We hope that this helps all of the gamers out there who are multi game talents, since we saw quite a lot of you this week hop from game to game and do amazing at each title. So if you want to be a part of multiple teams, sign up for a team and an after school class, or play casually with your friends and then dominate the competition, we wanted to help you out with this discount.

Lastly, the schedule for the upcoming week and policies for being open in November. We will be closed Monday and Tuesday, the 30th and 31st of October, to do regular maintenance on our room (and add some sparkly new additions). We’ll be opening on the 1st of November and will be holding free social club from 4:00pm - 5:00pm every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the month of November (though I do recommend you reserve a slot for those days by signing up on the YMCA website). As this is our first month being here at the YMCA we want to learn and grow with the community, so please send us feedback, emails, or come in person to talk from 1:00pm - 5:00pm each day. Outside of that time we will be closing our doors to focus on our CT Storm teams. If you are interested in seeing the space outside of those times, please send an email or feedback form, and we can work with you to find time to learn more, tour the space, or do a skill assessment.

And with that, this has been your CTEA Weekly Update for the week of October 29th. I was so glad to see many of you make new friends, discover new games with old friends, and show off the skill we have here in Wilton. As CTEA heads into our first month of being open I'm really excited to learn and grow right alongside our games for a stronger, more social gaming future for Connecticut. I hope you all have a good week and if you have the time, come check out a free Social Club or sign up for a program and take your gaming, computer knowledge, or coding ability to the next level!