Meet the man leading UTA’s Fortnite team: Pfluger

Welcome to the first in a rebooted series of CCA Featured Fortnite Player Highlights. This inaugural week's featured player is former varsity golfer and current UTA Esports Fortnite player Pfluger.

To many he’s known as one of the best collegiate Fortnite players in the country but he used to have aspirations of becoming a competitive Rocket League player. He’s also a coach on Pro Guides and helps other players improve.

(If you want to catch previous editions of the CCA Featuring Fortnite Player Highlight, check out the eFuse portal)

Jon Pfluger, also known online as Pfluger, is a collegiate Fortnite player representing the University of Texas - Arlington esports program. He decided that he wanted to go to UTA Arlington because of their Rocket League team. He also wanted to help build their Fortnite team and he’s currently doing a really good job at that.

“Back in 2011 my brother introduced me to Minecraft. He and I used to play that game on my dad's work computer for about four to five years. And then in like 2015, or whenever Rocket League first came out, I got that game and got into that for about two to three years.” said Pfluger.

“I tried to go professional in that game, but that skill gap is crazy. Then I got into CS:GO, that was my first shooter game. And then I went to PUBG and my friend that I found through Rocket League introduced me to Fortnite back in 2017 so I’ve been playing the game ever since it first came out.”

As a fellow Minecraft lover, I personally think he started off with an amazing game, but as mentioned before, he had aspirations of going professional in Rocket League before making the shift over to Fortnite and since then he’s gone on to win multiple events and become a well known figure in the collegiate Fortnite community.

“My dad was one of the biggest inspirations. So I'm going to this LAN in DreamHack and if I win, I will dedicate it all to my dad, he was my number one supporter, he passed away in 2017.”

Pfluger called back to when his dad first introduced him to golf and made him watch all of the golf majors and that’s how he became interested in the sport. He dedicated his performance at the recent DreamHack Dallas Fortnite tournament.

“Kuht. No beef, but me and Kuht are a duo in the competitive scene and me and him are always at the top of the East so he’s someone that I look forward to facing during events. I think him and Bussa are like a really good duo so I think that'll be fun facing Kuht and Bussa to see who can take the first place”

Pfluger called out his competitive scene duo Kuht as someone that he looks forward to facing in collegiate competition. Kuht is the player with the most wins in CCA Fortnite’s brief history and the only other person close to him is his teammate Bussa. Pfluger and Kuht represent two schools, UTA and Akron, that are considered to be powerhouses in esports.

“Let's do a CCA Invitational where the top players from each event are invited to an official tournament. I think a ranking system would be cool” said Pfluger.

A ranking system is something that he would like to see with players that place higher in the rankings get invites to future invitationals. This is something for the staff to look into and could possibly be a sentiment shared among other members of the community.

“I honestly hope they fix a few things about the meta. I don't really like the SMG meta so I'm hoping they bring back the old ARs and old shotguns. That'd be really nice.”

Fortnite chapter 3 season 3 is upon us and Pfluger would like to see the return of some of the old weapons including a few old shotguns. The new season also brings along changes that they as players need to adapt to and he’s looking forward to competing in more events in the new season.

“I am double majoring in Business Marketing and Management. So I plan on doing something with that. But I want to see how long I can stick in the esports industry” said Pfluger. “Once I graduate from college, I want to do some stuff with orgs like SSG, FaZe, all that stuff. I want to do business with them. I think that'd be cool.”

Alongside competing in all of these events, Pfluger spends a good chunk of time at UTA focusing on his studies and he already has aspirations of owning his own business and working with organizations such as FaZe Clan in the future. Given his experience, he very well could prolong his time in esports once he’s done with his playing career by becoming a coach or working with the companies that run events. And when he’s not working to perfect his craft or studying for his double major, he likes to go fishing. Sufficed to say he's a busy guy.

To end the interview with him, I asked him a few questions in a rapid fire round. I was able to figure out a few more things about him such as the fact that his favorite superhero is Superman but he prefers Marvel over DC, his favorite mobile game being 8 Ball Pool and that he supports the Green Bay Packers in the NFL. With that being said, you can go and follow Pfluger on Twitch, Twitter and YouTube.

Let me know who you would like to see featured next in this series. I’ll be back with another one next week and until then, stay ELITE!