Illinois Esports

Player Spotlight: Angela “AngieDovey” Yang

A face you might recognize from past years here at Illini Esports is Angela “AngieDovey” Yang, the new Director of Competitive and the current competitive coordinator of Valorant as well. You might remember the achievements of the Valorant squad in past years: Big Time Season 1 Champions and quarterfinalist in the Campus Clutch competition by RedBull in 2021. These achievements are a small testament to the dedication and leadership Angela brings to the team. I had the wonderful chance to sit down and interview her this week and discuss her life before IlliniEsports and what is in store for her in the future.

Angela grew up across the ocean in China. She lived in Shenzhen, a coastal region in China known for its beautiful beaches and very tall buildings. Shenzhen is also part of the Guangdong area which means a lot of people who live in Shenzhen are also Cantonese so there is a wide variety of people and a mix of cultures. There are always plenty of things to do and eat in Shenzhen, including Dim-Sum (one of Angela’s favorites), a type of breakfast/lunch in China where carts of food are pushed around with a wide variety of different food, steamed or fried. While Shenzhen is a great place to live, it tends to be extremely hot and humid. As such, when Angela eventually came to Illinois for University, she found the cooler weather here to be much preferable. During her childhood, she was always around laptops and computers as her father is a Computer Science professor and wanted her to be exposed to technology at a young age. As such Angela was exposed to games at a very young age and fell in love with video games and the community behind video games.

One of the first games that introduced Angela to the Esports scenes was League of Legends. Angela first started to play League when it first came out, back in 2012/2013. She was absolutely hooked on the competitive aspect of League of Legends and pushed herself to play better and aim higher. She eventually delved into the ametuer scene and played for a variety of small teams. Eventually, Angela moved to the States for High School in Connecticut. A driving factor for this was her drive to want to learn English better before entering university. Yet while there, she continued to explore her love for Esports and competitive League of Legends by playing for the High School’s Esports program. While the program wasn’t super serious, she still met a lot of people with a lot of background in Esports and the same love and drive for competitive Esports as she does. She learned a lot from playing in the program and realized that Esports was a path that she wanted to try to pursue. To this day, her passion for Esports is only greater than before.

Angela applied to a wide variety of schools and was eventually accepted into the University of Illinois, majoring in Psychology. When she first learned that she was going to be going to the University of Illinois, she immediately joined the IlliniEsports Discord server. In fact, she told me during the interview that “80% of her friend group here are through IlliniEsports.” She interacted with the community and was always a part of the League of Legends 10 mans custom games that IlliniEsports hosts weekly. She stated that “which was a great way to meet new people and hang out.” For her, the IlliniEsports was a community where people with the same interests can get together talk about the current Esports scene, how their favorite team won or lost, or even complain together about how the new character is not fair. These moments helped strengthen her love for Esports and the community behind Esports and pushed her to combine aspects of her own major/career with Esports. And, IlliniEsports was the best opportunity for her to get started on that path.

Angela eventually transitioned from League of Legends to Valorant. Angela camped on a stream for more than 12 hours to get the key and was instantly addicted to Valorant. She was so addicted to the point where she completely dropped League of Legends for Valorant for some time. Eventually, when the announcement came that Valorant was looking for a competitive coordinator, it was the obvious choice for Angela. She and her Valorant squad prove to be one of the best teams in the NA collegiate scene. This year, the Valorant scene at IlliniEsports is completely stacked with 22 people and 20 starters across 4 teams. The sheer amount of teams and players this year was due to the amount of talent present. Illini Orange, the main Valorant team, is composed of mostly radiants and the Illini Blue team even contains a range of only radiant and high immortal players. Currently, the Illini Orange team is undefeated in the BigTime Conference, beating the previous runner-up Wisconsin in the regular season, and are on track to winning a back-to-back title. The other Valorant teams are all doing extremely well in their respective tournaments, such as Conference One and NCAA. To continue to keep track of the Valorant team’s performance, make sure to continue to follow the weekly recap posted on Twitter (@Illini_Esports). 

This year, Angela became the Director of Competitive and essentially oversees the entire competitive department. Essentially, she is in charge of managing the competitive players and addressing any issues that come up, whether it is player conflicts or tournament signup issues. Toxicity is an issue that often comes up from players and needs to be addressed. Angela’s motto on toxicity has always been “Don’t be.” We believe here at IlliniEsports that toxicity is unacceptable and Angela (and the rest of the competitive staff team) work to deal with any issues regarding toxicity. Angela and the competitive staff’s busiest days are often at the start of the semester during tryouts. While tryouts are a much-needed aspect of Esports, it often comes with a lot of stress and issues as oftentimes 40-50 people would sign up for a respective game. While we wish we can provide everyone with a team, decisions do need to be made to try to get the teams that would work together the best with the best players behind it. To me, Angela’s reason for being here was easy to see from the start. It all stems from the community and the players behind the screen, playing the same games that she loves so much as well. This dedication to helping others and talent of being able to push players to their limits and achieve their dreams is something very impressive of Angela. With that kind of dedication and love for the industry, there isn’t much Angela cannot accomplish. I’m sure we’ll continue to see great things from Angela and I can’t wait to see what in the future for Angela’s career!

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Thanks again to Angela for taking the time out of her day to do this interview/spotlight. If you’re also interested in following Angela, her Twitch handle is AngieDovey, and her Instagram handle is also @AngieDovey. Again, to keep up with Illini Esports and the Valorant team, follow our social media accounts (Twitter/Instagram/Facebook) as game announcements and results will be announced there! Also if you are also interested in Esports be sure to join the IE discord at https://discord.gg/illiniesports. We always do many different events there and would love to see you join us there! See you there!

– – Geoffrey “Maybe” D.

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