Baldwinsville, N.Y. — The coronavirus shutdown has closed schools across New York and broken the hearts of thousands of athletes who are missing the spring seasons of their sports.
In every sport but one.
Across the state they aren’t playing lacrosse, but it’s game-on for esports.
Esports, it turns out, was made for times like this.
It’s the original sport for social distancing. High school teams from Baldwinsville, Fayetteville-Manlius, Chittenango and others continue to battle it out from the safety of the kids’ basements and spare bedrooms. Every game is a home game.
Standings and stats are kept in the High School Esports League (Homepage message: “Compete for Esports Glory at Your School").
Ben Wiley, of the Baldwinsville team, is undefeated in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. His teammate Nolan Hiltbrand, a Minecraft player, is ranked in the top 20% of the league with 54 points.
In response to the pandemic, the league launched a “Social Distancing Cup” tournament, a free online charity tournament to benefit communities hurt by the coronavirus.
The four-week tournament and fundraiser features a prize pool of $30,000 and other prizes. Participants and esports fans are encouraged to donate $5-$25 to the “Social Distancing Cup COVID-19 Response Fund” to support low-income families.
Even though the pandemic has halted the seasons of traditional sports, the students still compete virtually against schools across the country.
BEAST, or Baldwinsville’s eSports and Strategy Team, has 20 students and is split into two groups: 10 play Minecraft on computers, the others play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Switch.
Wednesday is game night. In normal times, the Minecraft group plays from home and the Super Smash Bros. group sets up shop in the school’s computer lab. With social distancing rules, everyone stays home.
Matthew Rheinwald, captain of the Super Smash Bros. group, has a small TV positioned on a desk in his room, with two speakers for an extra boost in sound.
“The only change is not having the team energy of it, because we can’t be with each other,” said Rheinwald, 17, a senior.
The same sentiment is felt with the esports program at F-M, which has been in the HSEL since early 2019. The club has 13 students, three of which play the popular vehicular soccer game Rocket League, while the others play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Despite schools being shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, students from Fayetteville-Manlius High School are still competing in their esports league on Wednesdays. (Patricia Stokes)
"It’s a little interesting not doing this with friends like we have in the past,” said Josh Citivello-King, a senior at F-M. “But other than that it is really the same with how we talk to each other beforehand to get ready, and talk after matches to see how it went and get help for later on.”
F-M co-adviser Patricia Stokes said she’s sometimes shocked at how the kids walk each other through selecting characters, stage layouts and strategies during practice and before matchups.
For instance, the students would say, ‘If you throw this (weapon) at your opponent, you can throw them off because they’ll expect it the next time and then you can do something different," Stokes said.
When school was still in session, students from both schools would encourage each other and talk strategy. They even had pizza parties.
“They’re all working toward a common goal, and we’ve been able to build a lot of those skills that go with a traditional sport that maybe my kids haven’t had an opportunity to learn before,” said Lindsay Cesari, the esports adviser at Baldwinsville.
The popularity of esports, or competitive video gaming, has exploded in recent years. A growing number of colleges are adding esports varsity teams that compete in League of Legends, Fortnite or other games. Professional esports players compete, often in teams, to earn millions in tournament prize money. This month, a group of NBA players participated in an NBA 2K tournament, broadcast on ESPN.
Both clubs are four weeks into HSEL’s Spring Major, an eight-week nationwide gaming tournament.
During the fall, Baldwinsville had six players qualify for the league’s national playoffs, including junior Dan Durkee, who finished in the top 128 (top 7 percent of players) for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Durkee, 16, has his parents’ basement to himself, where he plays on a 50-inch television. He doesn’t need a stick or a ball, a bat or a helmet or a uniform.
All he needs is a controller, and instead of the standard Nintendo Switch controller, he uses an old-school Nintendo Gamecube controller. He also uses a tripod to record his own videos for his YouTube page.
If you ask him if he considers this a sport, he’ll tell you it’s up to perspective.
“It depends on how you look at it. If you’re looking at it from a physical and active standpoint, maybe not, " Durkee said. “But it’s a game that requires all the same competitive knowledge that a sport would, so yes, technically I would consider it a sport.
"If you try enough, you can get good, but you still need to have good muscle memory and good reaction time. It’s hard to learn, depending on who you are.”
Whenever Stokes hears people deny the legitimacy of esports, she gives an example she learned from a colleague.
“When people say, ‘Why would I sit around and watch people play video games?’ I tell them, ‘Go look at Madison Square Garden and tell me why everyone sits around and watches people throw a ball around?’ Because it’s truly competitive,” she said.
Stokes co-advises the group with Amy Fiorito. They are women who lead a sport dominated by males.
“Although it’s not the case for F-M, most of the other teams in Central New York are run by librarians,” said Cesari, a librarian at Durgee Junior High School. “As a profession, librarians tend to be largely female. For a long time, librarians have embraced gaming as a way to teach a lot of the skills that are central to our curriculum.”
BEAST has 18 boys and two girls. Although boys have a reputation of being rough, Cesari says she’s grateful for their supportive environment.
For example, when the team communicates in their online chatroom, Rheinwald set rules to encourage diversity and inclusion.
No transphobic comments. No misogyny. No explicit language. No gender-bashing.
It also helps because some of the girls were friends with some of the guys before joining the club. Emily Crandall proved she was just as good as the boys during tryouts as she went on a winning streak over some of the team’s top players, Cesari said.
Baldwinsville’s club was approved by the school board after Cesari was able to establish enough interest among students and prove that esports help to develop career skills, including social-emotional learning.
Video-game playing, especially in a team setting, can also develop and enhance collaboration, communication, empathy, decision-making, and problem-solving SEL skills, she said.
It’s just like the more familiar varsity sports.
“I was attracted to esports because it targets a population of students that don’t necessarily have a lot of connections in the school community,” Cesari said.
Among the BEAST’s 20 students, 74% had never participated in a team sport, and more than half don’t participate in any other school clubs or activities, Cesari said.
Esports provide those kids with leadership opportunities, just as lacrosse and basketball do.
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Contact Mike Curtis anytime at mcurtis@syracuse.com or find him on Twitter at @MikeACurtis2.
https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/04/the-only-game-in-town-one-ny-high-school-sport-is-still-playing-during-coronavirus-shutdown.html
2020-04-28 10:05:21Z
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