Online Chess, Valorant, Super Smash Bros, Minecraft, League of Legends, Smite, Rocket League, and Fortnite are all games that are included in Esports. But for Tryg Weber and Bryan Lopez Cruz, Esports are much more than the games themselves.
Esports is an official sports team at RAHS. They play against teams across Minnesota in a league called MNVL, which stands for the Minnesota Varsity League. Weber said, “We have our games every Monday at 6 pm and have two competitions each year, one at the end of the fall season, which we just had in January, and one at the end of the spring season, which is the end of the year.”
Tryg Weber is a junior at RAHS, and Bryan Lopez Cruz is a senior at RAHS. For the Fall season, they were each other’s teammates. Weber said, “I expect the spring season to go great, the Minecraft game teams alternate between the two seasons. In the fall, it is two teams of two, and in the spring it is one team of four. The reason being is that’s just what the League wanted.”
Esports is something Cruz and Weber found themselves in easily, as Cruz said, “ I joined randomly. I heard about an Esports club and decided to show up to one of their meetings, not expecting too much out of it. But when I heard that there was an esports league that included high schools all over Minnesota, and not only that, but they had Minecraft as one of their games, I knew I had to join.”
Esports is something that continues to slip under RAHS’ radar. Weber said, “My biggest challenge with Esports is getting the message out that Esports exist at RAHS because we don’t have much of a presence in the student body as other sports. I feel like not a lot of the student body themselves receive that recognition, so we do not get a lot of new people, which is frustrating.”
Some members like Cruz, have challenges with finding time to practice. Cruz said, “The biggest challenge I’d have to say is finding time to practice if we ever do. I’m working full time, so I only have one or 2 days off in a week, and I work closing [shifts], so I can’t really coordinate with my teammates too well.”
Funding has proved to be another problem within Esports. Weber said, “As far as I know, we do not [get funding from the school]. We each have to pay fifty dollars for each player to play in the league, and we do have to cover that ourselves, and we do not have computers of our own, we just use the CAD lab, located in the D wing.”
The fall season has gone well, with Crux and Weber’s Minecraft Bedwars team winning state for the first time due to having an undefeated team in the League. Cruz said, “There was this one team that had won finals like 5 or 6 times in a row. And I won’t lie they had an ego and didn’t treat people too well in the league. It definitely bummed us out when they beat us again and again over the years.”
With Weber being the only junior on the team, he fears that this year might be the last year for wins like these, with the rest of the members graduating this year.
Weber sees himself using a lot of his skills in the future. Weber said, “I understand a lot of stuff about computer science. I am going into computer science [for college], and it comes really easy to me for programming, so this specifically got me a career. Minecraft modding is where all of that started, so really grateful.”
RAHS Esports’ spring season registration is open, with their team competing in SSBU. Registration and link to their discord can be found here: https://sites.google.com/apps.isd623.org/gamersunion/home
