It’s probably an understatement to say that competitive gaming’s growth spurt is continuing at a rapid rate in the United States at the high school level.
According to the latest participation survey by National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), released last September, esports participation spans 22 states with more than 27,000 boys and 4,000 girls competing, an increase of more than 3,000 students from the year before. Of course, these numbers only reflect states where gaming is recognized as an official varsity sport and represents just a drop in the bucket of the total number of high school age esport athletes.
The High School Esports League (HSEL), established in 2012, governs the esports activities of more than 3,100 schools and includes more than 100,000 students in its seasonal tournaments. In addition, the Interstate Scholastic Esports Alliance (ISEA), is coalition of educator-run scholastic esports organizations, comprising more than 2,000 schools and 65,000 students across 12 member leagues.
In Towson, Maryland, Calvert Hall College High School has welcomed the emerging activity with open arms by participating in what is also known as esports — and turning it into a mainstream extracurricular activity, akin to playing for any of the Cardinals’ 40 frosh/soph, junior varsity or varsity athletic teams.
The all-boys Catholic school’s competitive gaming team uses a dedicated 1,300-square-foot room with 23 PC gaming stations, four console stations, large-screen televisions and a variety of related equipment to help players compete against East Coast and Canadian public and private school teams in the fall and spring seasons.
Calvert Hall alumnus Steve Martin donated $75,000 of seed money to help fund the project.
Martin, the Studio Head of Firaxis Games of Sparks, Md. for two decades, said that his involvement with esports at his alma mater was “completely unexpected.”
When current Calvert Hall President Brother John Kane and former Principal Chuck Stembler approached members of the Class of 1983’s 40th Reunion if they had any insights into forming a cyber security team, Martin was intrigued by the thought that the cyber security and prospective esports teams could share a dedicated area in the School’s George Young Hall.
“The school had already done a lot of research,” said Martin, who ran on the Cardinals’ first cross country teams for four years. “They saw what it could be — they had a great plan to build a specialized place for junior varsity and varsity teams. And they understood the passion I had for it. The space looks sensational and I love that Calvert Hall is on the cutting edge of esports.”
Investing in esports, which, according to the Calvert Hall’s website, has a 532-million-person audience generating over a billion dollars in revenue with a 14.5% growth every year, makes sense for a college preparatory school like Calvert Hall.
Noting that the National Association of Collegiate eSports (NACE) includes 260 schools with more than 5,000 participants — running the gamut from well-known schools (Ole Miss, North Carolina State) from major NCAA Division I conferences to much smaller NAIA institutions — it stands to reason that potential collegiate players would benefit from the experience of playing at the high school level.
However, even without aspirations of competing in college, esports give competitive gamers an outlet to continue an activity in which they have been participating — and enjoying — most of their young lives.
Although Calvert Hall senior teammates Garrett Arrowood and Colin Stark have been accepted to West Virginia University, neither of the future Mountaineers said they have made plans to participate in the school’s esports program.
Calvert Hall esports coach Paul McMullen said that esports players are typically not used to being part of a team.
“Most of our students have never played these games as part of a consistent team,” he said. “Most of the time video games are played as a single individual getting randomly partnered with strangers on the internet. One of the major challenges we have is breaking kids out of the ‘individual’ mindset where they pad their own stats and highlights and actually play for the team.”
Arrowood’s main focus on a recent game day was to help one of two of the Cardinals’ Rocket League teams sweep a pair of matches by filling in for a missing teammate. Arrowood usually specializes in Overwatch, which is the second of four games offered by the program. Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. are the others.
Rocket League features a soccer format, rewarding teams that outscore opponents while using tumbling rocket-powered vehicles to strike a ball into an opponent’s goal. Underwood’s presence on the three-man team was a key to the 3-1 victory.
“If he hadn’t filled in for us, we would have had to either forfeit the match or play the match a player short, which would have been a significant disadvantage for us,” McMullen said. “It isn’t unheard of to play with a player down, but it makes it extremely difficult to win.”
Calvert Hall’s other successful Rocket League unit prevailed on a “golden goal” in the first seven seconds of overtime by Slade Lippy, assisted by Yianni Vasilakopoulos for a team that ranks second out of 111 teams in the PlayVS league. Junior Joe Stefano rounds out the trio.
In the fall, Lippy, Vasilakopoulos and fellow senior Josh Farley were the Rocket League Eastern Region PlayVS.com champions.
PlayVS, founded in 2018 is the official esports partner of the NFHS, coordinating the sanctioned varsity programs. Its platform offers tools for schools to build and manage their esports teams, schedule matches and track performance statistics. In addition to Rocket League and Super Smash Bros., its menu of gaming offers includes League of Legends, NBA 2K and Fortnite.
McMullen said the various games share aspects of competitive gaming and differ in others, sort of like comparing football to lacrosse.
And there are other reasons why sports analogies are plentiful when it comes to competitive gaming.
Arrowood said that the team’s ability to work together is an important part of what makes esports so appealing.
“It’s the same kind of chemistry you would have in a football game,” he said. “You have to make sure you have the right matchups.”
According to PlayVS, esports also help develop critical skills such as teamwork, communication and strategic thinking, while fostering a sense of community and school spirit.
McMullen said that there are transferable skills that you would find in traditional sports and esports.
“The typical athlete that you think of, somebody who plays football or lacrosse, often you think of them as big, athletic, fast type of individuals and students,” McMullen said. “We have some of that here in esports, but some of the skills are going to be a little different. You certainly have to have students with exceptional hand-eye coordination in terms of being able to process information quickly and respond by using controls, whether it’s a gaming controller or a keyboard.”
Combining teamwork with mental toughness helps to make a top competitive gamer, McMullen said.
“You have to have excellent communication skills so the students can call out plays, identify opponents and (figure out) what they’re doing,” he added ”You have to be able to identify trends of what your opponents are doing and change strategy mid-match. You also need a fair amount of resiliency if you lose a fight or a match, (to see) if you can bounce back.”
Like athletes who review their performance, esports players also can benefit from a similar process.
“There’s a fair amount of analysis,” McMullen said. “We analyze game film, not only of our own teams, but if we can find film of our opponents, so that we can see what type of compositions that they like to run, or characters they like to play with, so we can counter it, and beat it.”
McMullen, an English teacher at the school for more than 20 years, said he was not surprised when more than 80 students showed up to an interest meeting last spring when the idea of starting a full-fledged team was being formulated.
“I’ve been playing video games since I was in middle school.” he said. “And I know the popularity, particularly among young men. It was more about picking the games we knew the students would be interested in. In the fall we had a roster of about 45 students who came in on a regular basis to play. I’m really excited that we have the rosters that we do, and hope that we’ll continue to grow.”
Vasilakopoulos said that he was more than ready to join the team as his senior year approached.
“Actually, I started in the summer,” he said. “I was so ready. I was trying to help with all the computers, trying to get everything ready as quickly as possible. I’ve been playing games all my life, so it’s like, especially when I heard that Rocket League was one of the games, I was so excited. I was ready to go, ready to play. I saw this as an opportunity to continue to play more competitively. So that was the main thing — playing at a higher level.”
Lippy said that his passion for playing Rocket League could lead to bigger things.
“It’s a game I really enjoy,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to possibly playing professionally.”
He said the sport requires “a lot of focus and technique” within a team structure that relies on quick collaboration.
Vasilakopoulos cited strong communication skills for the team’s success.
“We have to communicate during every single play, (for) every single position that we’re in to make sure we know where our teammates are,” he said, noting that he occasionally takes a quick look at Lippy’s screen during brief interludes “to make sure the ball’s not coming towards us, and then I’m ready to hop back in the game and get the ball.”
According to Lippy, close coordination with Vasilakopoulos helped the Cardinals strike quickly in OT.
“Yanni went for the kickoff,” he said. “And it was a dead challenge at midfield, and I just, like, cheated up, and I just scored off the kickoff.”
Whether or not playing esports for a high school team will eventually lead to playing professionally, it appears to be at least one way to begin the journey.
“It’s just like regular professional sports,” said Matt Regert, a former Baltimore Youth Hockey player who also played the sport at Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore. ”You can’t just come out of nowhere to be a pro. Where you play matters.”
Regert, 39, who was a producer for Baltimore’s all-sports radio station, 105.7 fan, before becoming an administrator at an engineering firm, started playing video games when he was four or five and remains an avid player.
He said that “the scope of esports is massive and has blossomed even more since COVID” while noting that some esports matches draw large crowds in Asia to watch competing teams battle it out.
For instance, the League of Legends World Championship held at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea, recently sold all 16,000 seats in a matter of minutes — while a million more fans streamed the event — for the League of Legends World Championship held at Gocheok Sky Dome.
Reaching that level of popularity in the U.S. is not a sure thing, despite a surge in interest that has yet to crest.
Still, schools like Calvert Hall, are hoping to ride the first wave of esports enthusiasm while waiting for others to join the fun.
