DuPage Sports Commission Announces Midwest Battleground 2025

Midwest Battleground 2025 is coming to DuPage County, Illinois.
 

 Dates: February 28th-March 2nd, 2025
 

Location: Sheraton Lisle Naperville & Scrims Esports Center
 

Four Collegiate Brackets:

• Overwatch 2 (16 teams)
• Valorant (16 teams)
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (16 teams)
• Rocket League (24 teams)

*We had 28 teams from 20 different schools and 8 states complete in the Midwest Esports Invitational earlier this year*

Illinois High School Esports Association (IHSEA) Super Smash Bros. State Tournament:

• IHSEA will host two different tournaments - crews (5v5) and singles (1v1) at Midwest Battleground
• IHSEA will host four qualifying tournaments at IHSEA schools leading up to our event (started with a school in Bloomington, IL)
• Each qualifying tournament will send two high school teams to the state tournament for crews and will have a running point standings for 1v1
• At the end of the four qualifying tournaments, top 56 singles (1v1) players will qualify for Midwest Battleground along with the 8 high school crew teams
• Last singles (1v1) qualifier will take place on Saturday at Midwest Battleground, 8 more players will qualify, bringing the total to 64 players for the Sunday State final
• Expecting about 200 players on Saturday and about 90-100 players on Sunday

Open Bracket Tournaments: (approx. 400-500 players across the open tournaments)

• SSBU (1v1 and 2v2)
• Smash Melee (1v1 and 2v2)
• Smash 64
• Rivals 2 (the game launched October 23rd, about a week ago)

Here are the a few organizations that we are partnering with on hosting the activations, educational sessions as well as the workshops.

LANFest – https://lanfest.com/ - non-profit organization that is heavily involved in all aspects of the esports ecosystem

CS4IL – https://cs4il.org/ - mission is to bring world-class computer science education to every school in Illinois – K through 12

Network of Academic and Scholastic Esports Federations (NASEF) – https://www.nasef.org/ - non-profit worldwide org. with a mission to provide opportunities for all students to use esports to develop STEAM based skills

Esports Trade Association (ESTA) - https://esportsta.org/ - promotes, protects and advances the broader interests of the esports community in United States and Internationally where its chapters are located

Activations/Workshops:

• College/University Fair – inviting schools to participate
• BOYC (going to be run by LANFest and the Chicago Chapter)
• Minecraft Workshop (going to be run by Mark and his team at CS4IL) – beginner level, advanced level and teacher’s sessions
• Farmcraft Workshop (going to be run by NASEF)
• Esports directors panel as well as few other educational sessions geared towards collegiate esports athletes, high school esports athletes and parents (run by NASEF and the participating esports directors)
• Vendor/expo area
• Free play area (going to be run by LANFest)
• Friday Happy Hour – 4-6pm (organized by ESTA, we will provide hors d'oeuvres and will have a cash bar)
• Saturday Morning Coffee Connection – 8-10am (organized by ESTA, coffee, etc. will be available at the hotel)