Often considered to be a frontrunner in the Fortnite collegiate GOAT conversation, SAP speaks about his career, how colleges need to do better to spread awareness on scholarships and more.
Welcome back to another installment of this weekly series aimed at highlighting talented players in the collegiate Fortnite scene. This week’s featured player is a gym rat, former varsity baseball and football player and competitive Fortnite player Sap.
When he’s not competing in events, he’s spending his time streaming, studying or doing reps at the gym or playing basketball with his friends.
Who is Sap?
Nick Saparito known online as Sap or SapGames is a collegiate Fortnite player for Montclair State University (MSU) in New Jersey. He’s also one half of the duo alongside Capo that won the Nick Eh 30 Collegiate Invitational recently.
“My last name is Saparito so the first three letters of that spell out Sap so that’s where I got that from and that’s been my nickname for years. Everyone that knows me calls me that, even people who don’t know me call me because the word gets around.”
“I started gaming when I was like four or five. I originally started playing the Pokémon games and then my brothers introduced me to the Halo games and I got into that on console and that’s how it all started.”
Sap recalled how he began playing games citing his brothers as the reason why he got into the Halo games which then led to him discovering similar games and competing in many different tournaments.
“I’m just a naturally competitive person. I’ve always played sports which has made me very competitive so whenever I play video games, I always try to be the best and competitive with it”
“I played varsity football in high school and I played baseball as well during the first two years of high school.” said Sap. “I was a wide receiver on offense and I played safety on defense but I was mainly a wide receiver.”
Just like Pfluger, Sap used to play sports at a varsity level in high school. In his case, not playing just one but two different sports and that explains how he’s able to easily transition into new roles and always stay competitive.
Sap’s biggest inspiration and his love for working out
“It’s got to be 'hard work', I try to grind as much as I can”
“It’s definitely my mom because she’s a hard worker and I try to be a hard worker just like her.”
His biggest inspiration is his mom as he says that she’s the reason why he always works so hard because he’s trying to be like her.
“I go to the gym a lot, that’s probably my biggest hobby and other than that just gaming. I go to the gym probably 5 or 6 times a week.”
As mentioned before, Sap loves to hit the gym and that dedication he has to staying fit produced one of the best moments of the Nick Eh 30 Collegiate Invitational when he flexed for the viewers while he was getting interviewed by Nick, BenK and War towards the end of the event.
He had just finished playing some basketball right before this interview. He plays the small forward position although he also said that he doesn’t always play as a Small Forward; that’s what his playstyle resembles.
Thoughts on the scene, the GOAT conversation and the season so far
“I think they need to do a better job promoting their scholarships and opportunities because when I was in high school, I didn’t even know that I could get a scholarship for esports so people know that it’s an actual career and they could go to college for it.”
He believes colleges need to do a better job with letting high school students know that there are opportunities such as scholarships available to them at the collegiate level and that they could pursue a degree without having to stop playing events competitively.
“I think it’s definitely good because it adds a lot more competitiveness to it as most people want to be the best so it gives more motivation to players at the top to win events so they can be considered the GOAT”
Sap’s been brought up in the collegiate Fortnite greatest of all time (GOAT) conversation recently and he believes that it gives extra motivation to all the players but especially the ones at the top to perform well every time so they can potentially be considered the GOAT.
“I think the meta needs to change a little bit, it’s not been my favorite season but they’ve been making changes more frequently in the preseason so things are looking good and I think it’ll look better by the end of the season.”
He’s optimistic for this season and says that things will look much better at the end of the season but as of right now, he wishes that there would be changes made to the meta.
Who Sap would like to face, his daily schedule and future plans
“I know that all the people from Akron are really good like Kuht. I’ve talked to him before and he’s a really good player and he’s also a really good person. He’s working hard so that’s why he’s at the top and he deserves it.”
Sap had high praise for Akron Zips player Kuht saying that he puts in the work and deserves to be the guy that everyone would like to face because of it.
“I streamed over 100 hours this past month so I probably stream like four or five times a week and it’s hard to balance everything so I try to schedule stuff when there aren’t tournaments so I’m doing everything that I need to do before the tournament starts and I can just play and relax.”
He’s been putting in a lot of time in front of the cameras through his stream and credits planning things in advance for being the reason why he’s able to dedicate so much time to everything that he does.
“My goal for a long time has been to be a content creator and I’d say that I would rather do that than play competitively because that’s always been a big dream of mine. After finishing my competitive career I want to branch out and do different things.”
Much like his life so far, Sap doesn’t want to limit himself to just one thing and the next thing he wants to do is to make it as a content creator. He even goes as far as to say that he loves making content for his viewers more than competing in events because that’s been a dream of his for a long time.
We ended this interview with another rapid fire round. I learned that his favorite sports team is the Pittsburgh Steelers from the NFL and his favorite player is Randy Moss because they both play the same position, he’s also a FaZe Clan and FaZe Temperrr fan and he believes that Europe is the best region for esports outside of North America because of their gaming culture.
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!
Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest collegiate esports news and updates.