After school, in Tristan Landrus’ Technology Applications class at Churchill High School, there’s often a group of students racing through Rainbow Road, shooting squid ink at each other or overpowering each other on Yoshi’s Island.
The students are part of the growing E-Sports team.
They play games like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart.
And they are good—really good.
Sophomore Patrick O’Hern is the team’s captain. He recently competed in the High School E-Sports League Fall Major. He tied for fifth out of nearly 1,400 competitors. A couple of other players on the team made it to the top 100.
O’Hern’s game of choice is Super Smash Bros.
He started playing the game in second grade but didn’t start competing until a couple of years ago. But even he will admit he didn’t get that good at the game until about a year ago.
“I love this game. And I get to meet a lot of awesome people through it,” said O’Hern. “Having this club, I have had people ask me about the club. It lets us build a fun community.”
But it’s not just fun and games for O’Hern. He’s currently enrolled in Landrus’ Video Game Design class. So, he’s literally learning to create a video game from the ground up. That and the E-Sports club give O’Hern a great excuse to play video games for homework. His teacher and E-Sports team sponsor thinks that’s pretty cool, too.
“When I was in high school, I never thought this was possible,” said Landrus. “It’s super cool to get to teach this every day. I get to teach them to build a game, and they get graded on it.”
Landrus loves watching his students compete and see the community they are creating. It’s a dream he never thought possible.
“The whole point of the E-Sports team was to create an environment for these kids who didn’t have a place like football or cheer or band,” said Landrus. “My goal was just to create an environment for them to play and have fun. But as soon as we started competing, they started rising up through it. I am super proud of them. It’s fun.”
