The OU Gaming Club hosted its annual Back to School event from Friday, August 28th through the 29th and saw its biggest new year campaign growth in the organization’s nine-year history.
The event took place in the OU Gaming Lounge, located in Cross Center B on the OU campus, during its operating hours. While the Lounge’s gaming equipment was free-to-play, as it will be all semester for OU students, the Gaming Club hosted its annual raffle for a Zodiac Labs gaming computer provided by the company and made to order.
There were over one hundred raffle entries for the computer, which went to a freshman student for the second year in a row. Zodiac Labs has been a strong partner with the OU Gaming Club and OU Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation for years and has provided the lounge with sim racing rigs and more.
The OU Gaming Club Discord server also saw its largest addition of new members in its history, with over 700 new members and over 300 verified OU students for the Fall 2026 semester. In the past, the server has averaged around 350 new students, with a previous peak of 400.
The Webster, the newest apartment complex in the Ivy Properties student housing area, provided food for Back to School. Ivy Properties is a partner of Housr, which is a new affiliate of OU Student Affairs.
OU ECCI also held its annual All Dev meeting on Sunday, August 30th, which hosted nearly 120 students directly involved with ECCI’s Competitive, Creative Content, and Community & Labs teams. This event was held so all development students could meet each other and learn about expectations for the new school year.
OU ECCI’s competitive roster is much smaller this year than last year, with only eight titles down from over a dozen. These titles have much greater focus than before, with higher expectations of how well they’ll perform during the 2026-2027 school year.
The OU Gaming Club and OU ECCI’s school year looks bright, and there are many events planned for the Gaming Lounge coming this fall. Many of our competitive titles are also set to start their seasons soon. Stay tuned and check out OU Esports’ Twitch page to watch match streams when the season begins.
Thank you to Zodiac Labs and The Webster for helping make the Back to School event more successful than ever before.
