Ferris State University has appointed a new esports director, Justin Summe, who said he plans to use connections with gaming influencers to benefit students at Ferris State.Ferris State University
BIG RAPIDS, MI – Ferris State University has appointed a new e-sports director, Justin Summe, who said he believes existing connections with gaming influencers will resonate with his students.
Summe, who started with the university in January, has been tapped to lead Ferris State’s e-sports club, where students compete in registered leagues against other collegiate teams in Michigan and across the U.S..
They play a wide variety of games like Call of Duty, League of Legends and Rocket League.
Summe said the e-sports club has matches against Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletics Conference institutions and other events with Michigan colleges.
Ferris State even hosts its own annual e-sports competition, called the Michigan Bandwidth Bowl.
The club is located within the university’s Center for Virtual Learning, in its second academic year of operation.
Summe said he feels fit to lead the program due to his experience as a professional e-sports athlete, coach and manager. He brings connections with gaming influencers from those experiences.
“There are many players from my competitive past who were and are influencers in gaming,” Summe said. “Many of my close friends, who have become household names in e-sports, are people I met at events like Twitchcon, tournaments and leagues.
“These networking experiences were monumental to shaping my career and are now connections that resonate with my students here at Ferris,” he said.
According to his LinkedIn, Summe was previously an e-sports general manager in Los Angeles, where he also consulted for Amazon Game Studios and guided competitive game designs.
He was an e-sports coach for several years in Las Vegas before which he was a professional athlete in Portland, Oregon, competing internationally and setting multiple world records.
Summe has also served as head e-sports coach at Penn State Beaver, a commonwealth campus of Pennsylvania State University.
In addition to his professional connections, Summe said his background in sports psychology research and information systems training will benefit Ferris State competitors.
“Success in the industry is about much more than winning games,” he said. “Success, to me, is developing communities, teams and players athletically and professionally.”
A 2024 summa cum laude graduate of Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Summe was responsible for a sports psychology research project that explored how mindfulness and meditation impacted performance and mental health in Division I athletes.
“At the elite levels of competition, the difference makers for esports athletes are cognitive skills like problem-solving, adaptability and resilience, to name a few,” Summe added, “and these skills are directly translatable in life and careers far beyond gaming.
Summe also studied informational systems and cryptology, or coding, while in the U.S. Navy through its A-School accession training.
In 2022, Ferris State approved a degree program for students wishing to major in e-sports production.
RELATED: Esports industry growth prompts Ferris State to approve new degree program
Students interested in competing for Ferris State will be assessed by Summe, and assigned early in the spring 2025 semester.
“Through tryouts and organization of teams, we will be able to assign gamers to ‘premier’ and ‘plus’ leagues, so they can compete appropriately and give it their best,” he said. “I feel so lucky to be here, where the university is so invested in the program, having already moved ‘past the corner’ in developing a professional presentation.”
In addition to members who wish to compete, Ferris State students can also apply to join the school’s e-sports production team, helping to document, create, organize and host weekly broadcasts.
Students can write e-sports communication, work as competition broadcasters and help organize tournaments like the Michigan Bandwidth Bowl.
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