Esports Team Scoring Points With Students, Gamers At Glenwood Community High School


Glenwood’s varsity Esport team defeated Nevada during a match earlier this month.

Glenwood Esports coach Charles Heilman chats with team member Josh Leu.

Glenwood's ESports team is in its first year.

Glenwood Esports player Jack Smithers.

Glenwood’s Esport team plays in a dedicated classroom off the high school media center.

Rocket League game play.

Forty years ago, it was “Donkey Kong” and “Space Invaders” on game cabinets the size of refrigerators.

Today, its “Mario Kart” and “Rocket League” played on PCs and broadcast on ESPN.

Competitive video gaming – or Esports as its now called – has come a long way since the coin-operated days of the local arcade.

Esports is one of the fastest growing activities in the country. Its origins trace to the early 1980s with the arcade giving way to the modern home video game console, PC gaming, live streaming and digital platforms where millions compete in dozens of different games across the world.

Since 2018, over 8,000 high schools have added Esports as an extracurricular activity. In 2021, the Iowa High School Esports Association (IAHSEA) held its first season of competition.

In December, Glenwood Community High School joined the ranks, adding Esports as a varsity activity.

Charles Heilman has been involved with Glenwood Esports since the beginning. He pushed for the program with activities director Jeff Bissen and attracted the support of Cindy Menedez, the district’s director of student services. It was Mendez who helped secure the funding for the program in the form of a $50,000 therapeutic classroom grant from the Iowa Department of Education to help fund it.

The money kickstarted the program with the purchase of a dozen gaming PCs and needed equipment. The high school provided a dedicated classroom off the media center.

“I’d been recruiting kids for a team for about two years,” said Heilman, who is also an English teacher at the high school. “So, when we got the equipment and joined the IAHSEA that was a big step for us.”

Heilman said 50 schools around the state took part in the IAHSEA last year. That number is over 80 this year and still growing.

Glenwood began play in the seven-week, winter Esports season in December with a roster of 22 students competing in “Rocket League.” While the IAHSEA offers competition in a variety of games such as “Mario Kart 8,” “Overwatch 2,” “Rainbow Six Siege,” and “Super

Smash Brothers” among others, first-year programs like Glenwood’s are limited to competing in one game their first season.

Glenwood is off to a 3-0 start in “Rocket League,” one of the more popular competition titles.

“It’s basically soccer with RC cars,” Heilman said of the popular game developed by Psyonix in 2015 for PCs, Xbox and Playstation that has over 100 million players worldwide.

The premise of the game is simple: teams of three each control a car and use it to hit a giant soccer ball into the opposing team’s goal. It’s typical of the easy to play, hard to master games popular in esports. The game is a twitchy combination of high-speed driving and physics-based game play where even the slightest movement can have a significant impact on the trajectory of the ball.

“I’d say 60 or 70 percent of the kids had played it (Rocket League) before coming out for the team,” he said. “It’s an easy game to pick up and play but it has a very high skill ceiling.”

The competition consists of a series of timed, best-of-five games between teams of three players each.

Josh Leu, a senior on Glenwood’s Esports team, has been playing “Rocket League” since middle school and considers it his favorite game. The soccer-like game play also holds a lot of personal appeal: he is also a member of the Glenwood soccer team and a big fan of the auto push ball matches at the Mills County Fair.

“It’s probably the main reason I joined the team,” said Leu, adding he plays the game 6-10 hours a week.

Heilman loves to hear that. But his intention with the Esports team was never just about getting kids to play video games at school or out of school. It was purpose-driven to give students who steered clear of traditional sports a community to compete in something positive.

“A lot of these kids, most of them aren’t involved in any other extra-curricular activities so they haven’t had a chance to represent Glenwood in a sport,” Heilman said. “This gives them a chance be a part of the school and show their pride and represent the school in competition.”

When Heilman first broached the idea of an Esports team he did have to do some explaining. Especially when he visited the school board to present his plan.

“They really had no idea what it was, so I had to take them through Esports,” he said. “But they were fully on board.”

The high school administration, he said, has been “overwhelmingly supportive.”

Glenwood has its own YouTube channel that follows the team, complete with “shoutcasters,” the Esports version of commentators. They livestream all regular season matches. In late February, Marshalltown will host the state tournament.

Heilman has fought hard to manage Glenwood Esports as any varsity activity. He co-coaches the team with fellow teacher Bruce Landstrom. There are unforms, practices, scrimmages, game analysis and scouting.

“They don’t earn a varsity letter at this point in time but we’re treating this like any other sport,” he said. “They’re involved in state competition. They’re involved in pep rallies. Eligibility requirements, both academic and behavioral are the same. We try to run it as much we can in parallel with sports eligibility requirements.”

Coaching esports is really no different than coaching any sport, according to Heilman. It requires attention to detail, skills work and a strong familiarity with the game.

“There are so many different skills involved in ‘Rocket League,’” said Heilman, who was an avid “Rocket League” player long before Glenwood Esports team formed.

Then there’s the teamwork aspect.

“The cooperation and coordination of playing with a team of three, where they really have to communicate with each other is really key,” he said. “A lot of these kids are used to playing by themselves so having them on a team together is a different beast for a lot of them.”

Most matches are played online but Glenwood does have the capacity to host other teams.

“We have enough computers that we could host,” Heilman said. “We have Harlan later this season and might be good to host them and be good for the kids to see and play other kids in person and forge relationships.”

Just a few weeks into play, Leu already sees a tight knit team developing with play often spilling out of the esports room into competitive side games.

“A lot of us our seniors, we hang out together, we get along really well, have fun together and play against each other on our own time,” Leu said.

Both Leu and Heilman see a bright future for Esports in Glenwood and beyond.

“I think it’ll continue to grow,” Leu said. “There’s a lot of people I’ve talked to that play other games and they’ve said if they had ‘this game,’ they’d come out.”

The team plans to add play in additional games next season.

Esports may not be a sanctioned high school sport as of yet, but it might be trending that way.

“I certainly hope it is,” Heilman said. “We have the IAHSA right now, it’s organized by teachers, and lives outside the athletic association but it does a great job running parallel with them really well. This is only going to grow.”

 

The Opinion-Tribune

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