SEC Spotlight: Daniel "Obese Chicken" Reyes

Since the inception of it's Overwatch league, Southern Esports Conference has been brimming with talent. The news team wanted to highlight some of this split's players, starting with the versatile and volatile support main from Auburn University, Daniel "Obese Chicken" Reyes. Daniel, an undergrad student at Auburn University, has been playing Overwatch for almost seven years. He was a sophomore in high school when he realized he wanted to play at a higher level.

"The first time I hit 4200 on Overwatch, that was my beacon. I reached top 500 leaderboards, so I was like, I want to do this competitively," Daniel Reyes told us in an interview. "And then I ended up finding some [teams]." For three weeks, Daniel played alongside Infected and Angellic before moving onto other teams. "We were doing double blocks and stuff, playing against other good players. It was a lot of fun. And I just kept on doing that, playing for whatever team."

It wouldn't last long - Daniel suddenly left the game for a few years. "It was around Double Shield [that I stopped playing]. I just got so bored, right? So I quit playing for like a year or two, and then I came back to it," he said. Ironically, Daniel returned to the game out of boredom as well.

Daniel came back swinging with the Auburn University team - "I didn't find out there was a team until after tryouts, but I still got to play for them that year," he said. In Daniel's freshman year, he says the team was "stacked" - though players he names as Davis ("Ten") and Brad ("TheBrad"), support and DPS respectively, graduated that year.

On Auburn's performance last semester in SEC, Daniel said "We kind of fell off at the end - stopped playing - but I think we did okay. Wasn't our best, wasn't our worst."

Before Auburn, Daniel had floated between several teams - staying with Auburn let his game knowledge and hero versatility shine. "I started off as tank, I was playing Zarya." At this time, Zarya's bubbles were incredibly strong, he notes. "And then I swapped to DPS after that. I played a lot of Hanzo, maybe Tracer. And now I play support for [Auburn], a lot of Brigette and some Baptiste."

One of the main ways that Daniel shows off his versatility is on Lijiang Tower as...Junkrat? "I don't know why it started - I hadn't played DPS in the past two years - but they wanted me to play Junkrat on Lijiang Tower, and it was a lot of fun. I love Junkrat. There was this one season where I one-trick'd him and it was the best."

A press release from Activision-Blizzard indicated a potential return of 6v6 to Overwatch, leaving the community with much to discuss. "This is a controversial topic," Daniel acknowledged, "but I actually like 5v5. You get to play more [aggressive]. I also just don't like having two tanks, because it allows for double shield meta and it's more tanks in your face. I don't want to shoot more tanks."

If 6v6 were to return, however, Daniel notes he would continue to play support, despite the fact that his highest skill ranking belongs to tank. "My favorite is Zarya, but she's not very good right now, so I play a lot of [Junker] Queen and Winston right now." He says that he wishes "monkey dive" could be a more viable comp.

When asked what he would change about the game, if anything, Daniel proudly stated "Remove Widowmaker. Because I hate Widowmaker. And I would buff all the supports so I could have a lot of fun."

Beyond graduating Auburn, with a major in Computer Engineering, Daniel Reyes has no plans to continue playing competitive Overwatch. He forsees himself playing it for fun, alongside games like League of Legends, Fortnite, and pickup basketball.

As to the burning question on everyone's mind - What's with the tag? - Daniel had no answer. "[Obese Chicken] just randomly came into my head. Like, yeah, I'll make that my username. "

Thanks to Dalton/Slade, SEC CEO, for the graphic.