SUPERIOR — As the clock inched closer to the 6 p.m. match start, last-minute strategic preparations were made and anticipation built. The five-member UWS Black team was not on a field or a court but inside the 1,500-square-foot Esports Lab space on the campus of Wisconsin-Superior.
They entered the menu for the popular PC game, Valorant, a team-based first-person tactical shooter game set in the near future, as their Grand Finals match against Ringling College—a school located approximately 1,700 miles away in Sarasota, Florida —was set to begin.
The best of 25-round competition saw the two teams each take turns as the attackers and defenders, with the first to 13 designated as the winner. Each round is won by working with your team to either plant the “Spike” or defend and defuse it.
After approximately an hour of competition, the Yellowjackets were the first to win 13 rounds, eliciting a celebratory ‘Let’s go, boys!’ from team member Karma Gurung, a senior computer science major.
The thrill of victory was sweet, but the camaraderie enjoyed amongst members of the team is even better, according to Gurung.
“It’s more so what we do together than the game itself…,” he shared. “I think it’s just we’re having fun, we’re raging, we’re cussing each other out—that’s the fun part.”
Holden Law / UWS
Gurung and his teammates Manish Tamang, Skanda Koirala, Protsahan Khadka, and Quinn Schnabel compete against teams across the nation through the gaming platform PlayFly, which is the world’s largest collegiate esports league with 23,000 active student competitors representing 900 schools.
UWS is also one of 22 member schools participating in the Wisconsin Esports Conference (WEC).
The club team, launched in the spring of 2024, is coached by former UWS baseball player Brady Stocker, who is now working in Campus Recreation, and Nestor Martinez, who works in the UWS Information Technology department.
Holden Law / UWS
The coaching duo has been instrumental in helping to grow the program to now include two Valorant teams (Yellow and Black), with plans of expanding to even more titles in the future.
“We want to keep branching out into all the titles that we can,” said Stocker, who grew up playing the popular first-person shooter game Call of Duty. “…We don’t have huge enrollment, but I’d say our numbers are pretty great for our esports program up here.”
Like Stocker, Martinez grew up playing video games and has a special affinity for the first-person shooter series Halo. He hopes to field a UWS Halo team at some point down the line.
“I’ll be set for life, and I’m going to get those kids to the top,” said Martinez with a laugh. “That would be awesome to see.”
As the club looks to continue expanding, the two coaches plan to host an esports camp at UWS and attend Minnesota Varsity League (MNVL) state tournaments and other events to recruit new players to the team.
Holden Law / UWS
MNVL is the scholastic home for Minnesota high school and middle school esports, with schools like Cloquet already competing in the growing league as a club program.
Esports catching on at local Northland school
When the idea of forming an esports team was first batted around as a potential new activity offered to students at Cloquet Middle School, assistant principal Tom Lenarz saw it as an opportunity to fill a void.
Through his experience as a 19-year head football coach of the Lumberjacks, Lenarz is keenly aware of the benefits associated with team activities, namely the communication and cooperation skills that can be developed.
“We felt like this was a great opportunity to have kids who are not involved in sports or other more traditional team activities to have a way to play games they like but with other people,” explained Lenarz.
Through fundraising efforts for uniforms, equipment, and coaches by the Cloquet Eagles and the Cloquet High School Activities Department, the program was formed and ready to compete as one of 12 teams in the inaugural MNVL middle school season last year.
Tasked with coaching the team were Lenarz, who retired as head football coach in 2021, along with former Cloquet-Esko-Carlton girls hockey coach Mike Bushey and Cloquet School District Technology Specialist Bill Bauer.
Approximately 15 seventh- and eighth-grade students signed up for the team last year, with the team competing in cooperative multiplayer games like Mario Kart and Minecraft against schools across the state. The Technology Center served as the team’s home base.
Unlike the play-calling and X’s and O’s schematics associated with coaching football and other sports, the focus for the coaching staff is more on building camaraderie and team chemistry.
“It was more about working with kids versus having any sort of expertise with the games they’re playing,” said Lenarz. “The kids are pretty good about finding that stuff themselves.”
What Lenarz and his fellow coaches lack in specific knowledge of the aforementioned games, they make up for in their experience of leading successful teams and instilling the life lessons that come with them.
“How to handle a tough loss, how to be respectful of your teammates and your opponents — all the same big life lessons that we kind of apply to any other sport or school activities certainly are applicable to esports,” he said.
Contributed / Tom Lenarz
After the successful trial run ending with a trip to the state tournament and some hardware, some of the group’s ninth graders are now competing in the MVL spring club season at the high school level.
If the season goes smoothly and interest remains, Lenarz didn’t rule out the possibility of a high school varsity team next winter competing in the MVL.
“We’ve done everything we’ve done so far with fundraisers, but you know, if the numbers were to continue to grow, we could see that definitely being a thing down the road,” he shared.
