BROOKINGS Esports have arrived in South Dakota and Brookings High School is fielding a team this season.
Esports are organized contests of video game prowess, and theyve have gained mainstream recognition recently. Next year, Saudi Arabia will host the inaugural Olympic Esports Games. In South Dakota, the high school activities association conducted a trial run last year and has sanctioned esports for statewide competition starting this year.
They have six games that they sanctioned as part of esports for our state, and were going to do five of them this year, Brad Nupen, computer science teacher and general manager of the Brookings High School esports program, said. Were doing chess, Minecraft Bed Wars, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Mario Kart and Rocket League. Those are the five games that were doing. Were not doing League of Legends this year. That was a harder one to coach for me.
Brookings did not participate in last years trial run, but it does have a team of 21 students competing this season.
Theres about 20 different schools Rapid City Central, the Sioux Falls schools, theres Baltic, Dakota Valley, Flandreau has teams, and Deuel and OGorman and Madison. Theres all different sizes, Nupen said. We do all of our games remote. Each school is in their own place. They play against other schools, and they set it up as a tournament format throughout the year. You get so many points by wins, draws and all that. Then at the end of the year, there is a state tournament.
South Dakotas first high school esports tournament takes place Valentines Day weekend in Aberdeen, and the Brookings team is already practicing hard.
With our practices even, were playing against other schools. So its more of a pre-season, Nupen said. Its like a scrimmage so it doesnt count towards the season totals or anything yet but its a way to get us sure that everythings working.
He said establishing an entirely new program was challenging, but school administrators were helpful and supportive.
Once we got the go ahead, its been really good. We didnt know for sure if wed be able to go, because we didnt know how much it would cost and all that, and how much the students would want to be involved in it and if theres any support for sponsoring. And there seems to be a lot of support, Nupen said. Weve got a room next to my classroom in the CTE building. Its a former exercise room and they cleaned out all the stuff that was in there and now its set up with our computer desks, our tables for competitions, and the school bought a couple of Nintendo Switches so we could play a couple of the games that were offered.
He said most high schoolers are already playing video games, but organized esports help transform a sometimes solitary hobby into a cooperative, social activity that can promote teamwork and leadership skills.
From what were seeing, 70% of kids are playing video games and 40% of those are at least nightly working on video games, Nupen said. So heres an aspect where they can be using that in the school setting and sharing their expertise with other people. Its a positive environment, were all together here and were sharing with each other.
He said student response has been enthusiastic.
Weve already got a lot of students who want to help each other out, so its going to be driven by the students. Thats what its all about having them take ownership in the program and leading it forward, Nupen said. We want to be supportive of each other and develop as a team, so that going forward were bringing more and more people into it. We have to expand, and we want to continue growing the program. And the leadership is on the kids to do that on the students themselves to build that and get that enthusiasm and keep it going. Thats what I want to see from it.
The regular season of play in South Dakotas high school esports program officially gets underway Dec. 2.
Email Jay Roe at [email protected].
Leave a Reply