Meet Kai “A Nice Egg” Jaeger. Kai is a rising senior and a new face around Illini Esports. He is a substitute player for the C Rocket League team and juggles an impressive three majors (Political Science, International Business, and German). I had the pleasure to sit down with Kai and chat about his past and current adventures within esports.
Before Illini Esports, Kai was one of the founding members of his high school esports team. Kai played on his high school’s Rocket League team during this time as well, helping further tune his own skills within the game. He also played in many other games in high school such as League of Legends and Hearthstone. What drew him closer to Rocket League was his natural skill in the game. Kai hit 1600 grandchamp (a ranking within Rocket League) which at the time made him top 0.5% of all players in Rocket League. This impressive feat encouraged him to continue playing and competing in Rocket League and what eventually made him choose to try out for Rocket League in Illini Esports. His previous experience not only as a high school esports player but as a founder and leader of his esports team made him not only want to participate in esports once again but help others learn and experience esports for themselves.
What was impressive was that Kai was not only great at Rocket League but also in Hearthstone. He ended up winning the Hearthstone national championship during his senior year in HSEL (High School Esports League). This was not only an amazing achievement but also a super memorable moment. Kai was doing an internship in China at the same time as the HSEL hearthstone playoffs were occurring. This led to a weird situation where he was mostly away from his computer (as he worked as a tour leader through the yellow mountains) and was in a completely different time zone. As such, he ended up having to wake up early, delay his tour group (which his tour group luckily was super supportive of) and play on his phone with an unstable wifi connection. Despite this bizarre situation, he ended up winning it all and getting a sizable scholarship.
Since the pandemic has freed up some time, Kai decided to join Illini Esports and has been practicing with the team as a substitute Rocket League player. He and the rest of the rocket league team competed in a multitude of tournaments over the Fall and Spring semesters. While Illini Esports unfortunately didn’t make it to the National Rocket League competition, there has been great improvement this season. Kai described to me ongoing Rocket League practices, which includes a variety of climbing ladder (playing ranked mode in Rocket League), scrimming other University’s Rocket League teams, and rewatching old scrim or tournament games in vod reviews. To Kai, he feels that vod reviews improves his gameplay the most as he said “Honestly, the most enlightening thing is replay analysis – Looking at the replay to be able to see ‘Oh here is where I made a mistake, what can I do to better that, to improve.’” For next year, Kai is still exploring what to do, whether it is continuing to play as a player in Rocket League or transitioning into a leadership position such as a League of Legends coach. Whatever he decides to do, I’m sure the future is bright for him as he already has accomplished so much.
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Thanks again to Kai for taking the time out of his day to do this interview/spotlight. Again, to keep up with Illini Esports and the Rocket League team, follow our social media accounts (Twitter/Instagram/Facebook) as game announcements and results will be announced there! Again, if you are also interested in Esports or want to join the Rocket League team, be sure to join the IE discord at https://discord.gg/illiniesports as tryouts are announced there. If you just enjoy playing Rocket League casually, feel free to join the discord as well as pickup games will be planned there and is a great way to meet new people.
See you there!
Geoffrey “Maybe” D.