Esports are sweeping the country, and it appears to have caught on in Pilot Point, with the Bearcats picking up their controllers and pressing the start button on their first season of competitive video gaming.
The Bearcats’ 10-member esports team grew out of Pilot Point’s video game club, which started almost 20 years ago.
“We started a video game club for students to come, hang out and play video games,” said Jeremiah Wall, PPISD teacher and esports sponsor. “… We wanted to get the students more involved in extracurricular activities, and our game club allowed that, but it’s recreational, and adding a competitive element to it takes it to another level.”
The Bearcats use a global, web-based platform named PlayVS, which was founded in 2018 and recently became free to use, to compete with other teams across the state of Texas.
PlayVS provides the infrastructure for amateur esports, including tracking stats and scores, coaching tools and on-demand support specialists.
“They offer 16 different competitions that you can participate in, so I sent out a poll to the students to see which games they were most interested in, and Mario Kart and Fortnite were the top two,” Wall said. “We started with those, and hopefully in the fall, we’ll expand it to several more games.”
The Bearcats, who practice multiple times a week, field two two-person Fortnite teams and a six-person Mario Kart team, consisting of four races and two alternates.
Fortnite is a popular battle royale game released in 2017 where players compete to be the last person, or last team, standing in an evershrinking arena, and Mario Kart is a long-running arcade- style racing franchise starring characters from the world of Super Mario.
“The best part about it is the fact that I’m getting an extra competitive sport,” team member Connor Morris said. “I do two others, but this tops the list because I’ve been into gaming since I was about six and being able to do this allows me to really show off my personality a lot.”
Team captain Alex Castillo said the Bearcats have high hopes for their inaugural season.
“I hope we all reach the playoffs and end up getting championship trophies for being the best in the U.S. and, who knows, maybe compete against other countries,” he said. “I also hope, if we make the playoffs and keep getting better, we can become known as a really good team and not be underestimated.”
Wall said the new program offers a sense of community outside the more traditional sports, and he hopes the team’s performance this season will help the program continue to grow and add new members.
“This teaches a lot of the same lessons as other sports, like teamwork, and provides a sense of belonging,” he said. “This fall, we’re going to open it up to a lot more games and a lot more people. We want to create an open environment where anyone who wants to participate in some form or fashion, so anyone interested, even if they don’t want to compete, is welcome to come and play.”
