Esports or competitive video gaming has surged in popularity and offers a wide range of benefits to participants and enthusiasts. First and foremost, the esports world involves lots of teamwork and collaboration, and students must work together to achieve goals, fostering valuable communication skills. It even encourages strategic thinking and problem-solving, often involving complex game scenarios that require quick decision-making. Esports also helps create a sense of community and belonging, allowing kids from diverse backgrounds to connect over shared passions. It also helps to illuminate various career opportunities, from players to coaches, analysts, and streamers, contributing to legitimate industry growth. Moreover, esports offers an inclusive platform for competition, irrespective of physical ability, making it accessible to a diverse audience.
Overall, esports is about more than only digital entertainment; it is rapidly evolving with various advantages for those who participate. And, these days, it is wildly popular among high school and college students. With this wealth of immediate and real-world benefits, esports leagues, teams, and clubs are all now extremely common. In fact, many students are finding their place in their school community, and realizing they can participate in interscholastic sports without needing traditional athletic or physical skills. And, more importantly, they get to pursue one of their passions by joining an esports team or club. Introducing esports in high schools helps students build teamwork, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills that go beyond gaming. It's very inclusive, too, offering an avenue to connect, compete, and excel in a digital world. Plus, some students can even earn scholarships or other recognition.
As learning initiatives evolve and adapt to better serve students in the 21st century or, in recent years, better allow for productive learning experiences from anywhere, rest assured we’re always doing our best to gauge how we can help. We’ve even created a bunch of useful content for school leaders, classroom teachers, librarians, and various education professionals.
About three years back, Logan and his family learned that he had inherited a rare genetic condition known as TANC2 Syndrome. Instantly, most of the normalcy slipped out of his life—with near-constant hospital visits, medical tests, and physical struggles—but one thing that remained was his passion for gaming, leading to his mom helping him learn to build his own system.
What started simply as competitions among lifelong gamers has ballooned to this billion-dollar industry with professional video game players squaring off in tournaments around the world, students earning scholarships to play in college, and learning how to make money. Esports has even permeated high schools and it’s providing brand-new opportunities for development.
The appeal of esports in education is not declining in all likelihood. Beyond the opportunities esports participation creates for students, they also have new chances to compete, experience being part of a team, and even work on developing genuine career skills. They can also develop soft skills while competing, which commonly accelerates social-emotional development.
Educational leaders can leverage esports to help create lots of worthwhile experiences for students, including on both the social and academic sides of things. Since it’s now a varsity sport in many high schools, students can combine their interests and skills in team-centered competitions, find their place in school communities, and maybe even earn a college scholarship.
Aside from the likely guarantee that both parents and administrators will be skeptical, there could be a handful of possible issues with starting a school esports program. Ultimately, however, there truly are a long list of positives associated with interscholastic esports, like students building career skills, becoming part of a community, and fostering new relationships with peers.
Besides opportunities to participate in something they are truly passionate about, kids can also learn more about things like how esports has become this popular and some of its potential benefits and drawbacks. Also, some of the cons of esports in schools might be fairly obvious but in connecting them to their own personal experiences, students can learn a lot.
Just as they would participate in traditional school sports, like football and basketball, establishing school esports programs has become much more common with students even leading the charges in many cases. Similar to receiving athletic scholarships to play sports in college, students can now also do the same with esports—just one of the benefits it provides.
So much goes into creating a school esports program, especially if you are trying to quickly start competing against other teams. If you’re interested in jumping in to interscholastic gaming competitions as opposed to students just playing with their classmates, the High School Esports League serves as a great resource for athletic directors, tech directors, and even coaches.
The esports industry, beyond the high school and college levels, has been popularized via a number of different outlets. One of those is certainly live streaming top matches on platforms like YouTube or Twitch. And, while this excitement may seem unnecessary to casual observers, there are actually millions of people who follow these gamers, including the next generation.
