When Second Lieutenant Roxanne Ibrahim suffered an injury in 2020 and was forced to work from home during the COVID 19 pandemic, she turned to her love of the Call of Duty video game to fill her free time.

Ibrahim has always been into video games ever since she was a young girl. In fact, it was the Call of Duty franchise that lead to her to joining the military in the first place.

“My shooting was really good; my tactics were really good. I thought, where can I do this and also travel? I thought I’d go into a job like Call of Duty... which ended up being the military. It was perfect,” says Ibrahim who plays online under the handle MizzWhisky.

Little did Ibrahim realize that all that game time would eventually pay off with her making the RCAF Call of Duty team – yes, there is such a thing – last summer.

Ibrahim entered a DND tournament on a whim and ended up finishing in second place along with her playing partner, Cpl. Jules Deslaurier.

The result earned the pair a spot on the national RCAF team which was invited to take part in the COD Endowment Bowl in Los Angeles in October.

In the past, the Endowment Bowl, which benefits military veterans, has always been a bilateral affair between the various branches of the United States and the United Kingdom militaries. 2023 was the first year that a team from Canada was invited to take part, and Ibrahim was the only female qualifier.

When the competition started there were 10 teams in total with each team augmented by professional gamers and influencers.

The Canadian RCAF team was made up of Ibrahim and Deslauriers along professional gamer, Smixie, from Toronto, and Cpl. Brendan Jatsura and Ryan Mezei, who is a military firefighter, they were teamed up with Canadian gamer and influencer Natarsha.

The rest of the team included alternate Alex Clark and Nancy Coelho, founder and chairwoman of Game Force, who handled all the administrative duties.

For Call of Duty: Warzone aficionados, the tournament was played in a mini battle royale format that forces players to compete to be the last ones standing in a continuously shrinking map over four rounds.

Each team was divided into two duos who played with an influencer/professional gamer. Some of the best COD professionals in the U.S. were on the American teams.

Canada ended up winning the tournament using superior strategy.

“We put one squad inside the landing zone and one squad outside and worked together..No one else had any real strategy. We were very surprised,” says Ibrahim. “It made our job a lot easier.”