Esports Get a Victory Royale in the School System

Chase Wyatt, Staff Writer

Disclaimer: At the time this article was written, our school has not gotten approval to go to esports tournaments yet.

Esports. A new and quickly growing trend over the past few years has now made its way to high schools across the country, including Arizona. Electronic sports, or esports for short, has been vastly growing since the first years of games such as League of Legends, Hearthstone and DOTA, its most recent victory royale being that it has now it has made its way into the school system and opened up state tournaments to schools across the country.

If you didn’t already know, OHS has an esports club, and is welcoming new members to join their quest. Kenny Ngo, one of the co-leaders of the club, is hoping that they get the go ahead to go into tournaments against other schools across the state.

“It’s kinda hard to get approved, so Mr. Hafer wants us to face-off against another school was has been approved, like Deer Valley or Chandler. I don’t know if it’ll happen this semester, but its most likely going to be next semester when we get the go ahead to do so,” Ngo said.

One of the sponsors of the club, Nolan Anderson, hopes that the students of OHS will get the chance to compete in tournaments and feel involved in their school, and be part of a growing national sport and lifestyle.

“Tournaments are not out of the question, and the main concern is whether our school wants to pioneer in this or not. Like with other sports, you cant use steroids, and while our school is a little better off than others, and we have the money for better equipment, which allows you to kill people faster you know?” Said Anderson

Ryan Cong, leader of the League of Legends team, feels that the fact that they haven’t practiced or had many meetings, it complicates things as well and wants to make sure everyone gets a fair chance to play and makes the club fun for everyone, no matter the skill level.

“Its a lot of money this year, and we don’t really wanna ask people to fork over their money and not get a chance to play. We wanna include the most amount of people as possible and want to give everyone a chance. Say a lot of people want to play Overwatch, and others want to play hearthstone, we can’t just say only the Overwatch people can play or vice versa,” said Cong

Anderson personally enjoys watching professional gaming and knows that others at school do too, or at least watch YouTube or Fortnite or something and feels that kids would enjoy it more if they saw people from their school doing that and competing in tournaments.

“I hope to make this bigger than football on campus. I feel that esports is the new way for kids to get involved. I mean i like to watch video games, and i know that others do too, and I know others would enjoy it more if they saw their friends doing it instead of some random stranger. I love to pioneer things and i want this to be the next big sport in high school,” Anderson said.