Strathmore High School victorious in new Golden Hills eSports tournament

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A new eSports tournament made its debut at Three Hills School, May 22 for students at the junior high and high school levels. 

“A few months ago at the (Golden Hills) school division, there was quite a push to develop some eSports in our area, in our division,” said Ed Eberts, a teacher at Strathmore High School. “My school has been competing in eSports for a few years with what is called the High School eSports League – it is kind of an international competition; schools enter a team and they have a number of games available, but it is a play-at-home type thing and students use their own equipment.”

Eberts explained Golden Hills had a desire to see eSports competition in a more organized environment, established in person. 

Personnel from a host of schools that were interested in participating were gathered to establish coaches, organizers and tournament staff. The school division provided the equipment to operate the tournament. 

“They chose the game for this first time and that was Rocket League … that was organized back in February-March, and they received some equipment just after Easter break,” said Eberts. “Every school that was interested had to organize and get a team or two, or even more at the junior high and high school levels.”

Rocket League is a team-based multiplayer indie game where teams play soccer with rocket-powered cars. The object of the game is to score as many points as possible within the five-minute round time. 

He added, around Alberta, there are not yet very many events or organized competitions in the realm of eSports available to students. 

Further, Eberts said there has been a big push to develop eSports as an extracurricular activity to help kids learn sportsmanship, to compete, and to come together.

“They are doing it so much on their own time, this is another way to get kids to get together and build that community and find people that they want to play with and learn some skills like sportsmanship and organizing,” he said. “The gym up in Three Hills was completely full. They had way more teams and schools interested than they thought; we ended up with 14 teams at the high school level, and I forget how many there ended up being at the junior high level.”

Discussions are already underway at the school division to potentially host two more tournaments next school year – one being in the fall, and the second being in the spring. 

In future competitions, Golden Hills is looking to expand the number of games offered for students, such as titles potentially including League of Legends, Valorant, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Bros.

Additionally, once local teams are formed, Eberts said the idea will also be to entertain the possibility of competition outside of the Golden Hills School Division, such as throughout the province, or across the country. 

Strathmore High School claimed first and third places with two of their competing teams in the high school division.

Strathmore’s podium teams consisted of Seth Hook, Amari Hudson and Ian Toews (first place), and Chris Bullivant, Preston Davies, and Tyler Worthington (third place).