By Matthew Shears
When most think of competition they may think of popular sports like football or even tennis, but when people like junior Patrick Ginder think of competition they think about how important it is.
“Competition actually motivates you do something because if you have no competition you really have no incentive to be better because there is no stakes at all,” Patrick said. “You can’t win or lose if you have no opponent.”
For the first time, the Delta eSports team is competing against other schools under the direction of team coach Mr. Kurt Griffis.
The way eSports works is the team competes on Mondays in Valorant and Thursdays in Rocket League. The games are played on computers in Mr. Griffis’ room after school.
They come in to Mr. Griffis’ room right after school and it is a free game from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Then, the people who aren’t competing leave and the students who are competing get prepared for their game and start their competition.
Ginder is not the only one who thinks competition is important, though. Junior Ethan Chrich has his own idea on why it’s an important aspect.
“It gives your group a good understanding of the game,” Ethan says. “You can make friends and get to know the people on the other team if you don’t really know them very well.”
Importance of competition isn’t the only important thing for these players.
“A lot of people are into it and it’s kind of this new thing that could become a lot larger thing then it is right now,” sophomore Riley Holtzclaw said. “A lot of people play games and want to show off their true skill, but they don’t really have a place to do that, but when they have [an eSports team] they can actually do that and do it with friends.”
Not only do people like to have a team for school as just an after-school fun activity, but as Patrick says, “More and more colleges are offering scholarships programs for different eSports teams, so offering this kind of head start could allow some to get access to scholarships to different colleges.”
To prepare to get the scholarships they need to focus on a more important thing at this time: their competitions.
Ethan, team leader of the eSports Valorant team, has his own way to prepare for the Monday competitions.
“Every day before, like Sunday, I play the game to warm up and then when we actually get there after school on Monday we play, then we get into the game,” Ethan said.
Competition is not the only thing that they do in eSports. They do some things that they didn’t expect.
Riley says he didn’t expect “how friendly and open it was. I was thinking it was going to be a ton of people that were being all hardcore and super serious, but they’re pretty open and laid back.”
