Esports comes to Virginia high schools with college scholarships in play

People of a certain age will remember, back in their school days, how administrators would block access to flash game websites in the computer lab. Educational titles like “Oregon Trail” were a treat compared to having nothing at all.

But this year, as gaming continues to gain traction under the umbrella of “esports,” high schools locally and around the U.S. are adding the rapidly growing sport under their academic and athletic missions.

And why not? Not only is the esports industry set to hit the $1 billion mark this year, but colleges and universities increasingly are offering scholarship money to the best players.

“If society is heading that way, if this industry is a billion-dollar industry worldwide, why would we hold our kids back from it?” said Miles Carey, assistant principal at Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington and the faculty adviser for the school’s esports program.

Washington-Liberty has had a program for two years, but it will be joined by several newcomers expected to participate in the Virginia High School League’s pilot esports program for 2019-20. At least 23 schools around the state expressed interest when the state association looked into starting an esports season.

Gamers will form school teams and compete in three titles: “League of Legends,” “Rocket League” and “SMITE.” The esports platform PlayVS will host the VHSL’s season, culminating in state championships as in any other sport. PlayVS’s website counts Virginia among 11 state associations that sponsor varsity esports, while six others count it as a club sport only.

Which ties back to the commonly debated question: Is esports a sport? In the strictest sense, Carey doesn’t believe so.

“I don’t think these kids are getting physical exercise playing,” Carey said. However, “there’s learned muscle memory from hitting the keyboard and the keystrokes in just the right way to pull off whatever move you need to do in the game. So you could relate it to something like bowling or darts, where they’re not necessarily athletic like we think of a football player, but they’re still training parts of their body in that regard.”

Washington-Liberty counts the esports team as a student activity, like debate club or Model U.N., rather than a part of the athletic department.

Darrell Wilson, VHSL’s assistant director for academic activities, added that esports has a place in schools’ academic missions with its emphasis on STEM.

“When it comes to coding, when it comes to writing the games, when it comes to the algorithms, when it comes to designing peripherals and all those kind of things that go into the gaming world, all of those things are based in science, technology and math,” Wilson said. “Students who are learning those things are able to apply them in the esports arena, and again it’s a vocational opportunity.”

While esports alone is around a $1 billion industry, video games overall generated $135 billion in revenue last year, research has found. Colleges are noticing, too: The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) has 150 member schools, many of them small colleges that see an opportunity to stand out from the pack when recruiting students.

Not many programs offer scholarships, but students who are skilled enough to land one get an average of $4,800 toward their tuition, according to NACE.

Wilson and Carey see it as a matter of time before private high schools start competing for local esports stars the way they tend to lure quarterbacks and point guards with scholarship money.

“The way the industry is heading, it is parallelling professional sports in terms of their viewership, their events, and as we can see now, the scholarships at colleges and how it’s trickling down to affect the high schools,” Carey said. “I assume it will follow a pretty similar path.”

Even in states where the governing body doesn’t officially sponsor it, esports is popping up in high schools all over the U.S. Thanks to the nature of gaming, teams can compete with an opponent from anywhere in the world rather than just their own county, unlike in normal athletics.

The latest success story: Last year, Hathaway Brown School in Ohio became the first all-girls prep school in the U.S. to launch a varsity esports team.

“Kids are playing these games. They’re going to compete in them whether the school does it or not, just like kids can go play basketball at the park if they want,” Carey said. “But if we can give them a structured place with leadership roles and coaches, why wouldn’t we take that opportunity?”