Isaac "IsaacOhYeah" Osterfeld, a graduate student at Ashland University, brought home two collegiate Hearthstone national championships for Eagle esports during the fall 2025 campaign.
Osterfeld competed in two fall collegiate leagues, the Eastern College Athletics Conference Esports (ECAC) and PlayVS College League (PCL). Through both seasons, he achieved a combined 21-2 record en route to his championships.
Hearthstone is an online competitive collectible card game produced by Blizzard Entertainment, released in 2014. Players construct decks of 30 virtual cards and select a "hero" which determines some of the cards available for each deck that can be built. Most cards are either a spell or a minion. Minions are placed on a battlefield and can attack opposing minions or attack the rival's hero directly during a player's turn.
Spells have a variety of use cases, including healing one's own hero, preventing attacks from the opponent or damaging the opponent's minions or hero. In a one-versus-one format, players use these cards to beat down the rival hero to 0 health, winning the match.
In collegiate Conquest play, each competitor brings four decks and have the opportunity to ban one of each other's decks before play begins, strategically removing that deck from the pool. The first competitor to win with all three non-banned decks wins.
Osterfeld reflects on becoming a national championship twice in one semester
Osterfeld shared insight on how he approaches the game and his future plans with Hearthstone esports.
"When you play in the competitive scene each week, you have to bring four decks and then one gets banned by your opponent," he said. "So, each week, I would have to predict what my opponent was going to bring and what they were going to ban for me."
This format forced Osterfeld to expand his breadth of expertise, studying multiple decks each week and predicting the best ones to bring into each competition. His opponents are each doing the same thing, though, meaning Osterfeld is not only learning his own decks, but those he believes are likely for his opponent to bring, too.
By mastering the game within the game, he not only attempted to forecast his opponent's decks, but he also varied his style enough to make himself unpredictable.
"I think I finally mastered the art of, like, looking at somebody's history and kind of predicting what they were going to bring to the match, and that is a really big strength," Osterfeld said, "because I was pretty accurate throughout the whole season on what I could assume my opponent was going to do. I think one of my big advantages was that I changed around so much throughout the season that there wasn't a lot some of these people could do to prepare against me."
Speaking on the impact of winning these championships, Osterfeld expressed a sense of accomplishment after years of working towards this conclusion.
"I was super excited because, I mean, that has been the goal since Day 1," he said. "I always knew I was pretty decent at the game, and apparently, I'm pretty good. I mean, now I finally feel like I accomplished something."
Success beyond collegiate play
The training for a Hearthstone collegiate match means playing the game daily and keeping track of all new cards added to the pool during expansions and updates. Every season, new cards are added and many old cards are removed. Once a season resets, players compete across the world to reach the highest competitive ranks, the top being "Legend," in which players are ranked numerically for their position among their national peers.
Osterfeld shared that his personal competitive season to prepare for collegiate competition had brought him into the top 100 of all North American players, giving him confidence entering his ECAC and PCL matches by knowing he was one of the top-ranked prospects across all collegiate scenes.
Looking forward, Osterfeld is hoping to bring home more national championships to Ashland University esports, but his ambitions stretch farther.
"Now I can set new goals for next season, but I even want to start applying, or trying, to get into the World Championships leagues since I'm in the top 100," he said. "I even sent a picture to (head coach
P.J. Fiscus) yesterday (to show that) when I was just playing a normal game, I was facing the runner-up to the Worlds Championship. So, I think it's in reach."
Osterfeld by expressing his appreciation for the support shown by the Eagle faithful and his teammates.
"I just appreciate the support the Eagles have been putting out. I appreciate the posts and things on Facebook and it being broadcasted by our facility and teammates," he said. "My teammates have been wonderful this whole season, helping me out. They were willing to come in and help practice some things for me, so that was wonderful. It's just great."
The
full video interview with the Eagles' latest national champion is available on The Eagle Network YouTube Channel.
