The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Valorant esports team won the program’s first international title, less than a year after it captured the program’s first collegiate tournament win.

UH Mānoa won the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Rampage Invitational Tournament in August 2022, taking down seven teams from the Asia-Pacific region, including the University of California, Los Angeles; Nanyang Technological University (Singapore); National University of Singapore; Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico); University of British Columbia (Canada); University of Hong Kong SPACE; and Universidad de Chile. Valorant is a multiplayer first-person shooting game, and players are assigned to either attacking or defending teams. With the win, UH Mānoa took home a $1,000 prize, a first place trophy and Adidas team jerseys valued up to $2,000.

“The APRU tournament was a great way to start the semester and a really fun event with the team,” said Tate Tamaye, a UH Mānoa Valorant team member and computer science student. “The tourney allowed us to play against teams that I haven’t played against before, which made it very interesting. I hope that in the future, they will be able to invite more teams, and have a larger tournament.”

In 2021, UH Mānoa’s Valorant team captured the Collegiate Valorant Fall Brawl (mainly consisting of teams from the U.S.) for the program’s first collegiate tournament win.

The APRU esports tournament…