BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Earlier this month, five seniors from West High School travelled to San Antonio to compete in the EGF Overwatch 2 National Championship, bringing it home undefeated.

• West High seniors Hunter Burch, Eric Leyva, Ulysses Cervantes Carrillo, Erick Rodriguez, and Dismas Tapia said they’ve been playing together for a number of years and were thankful for the opportunity to take home the title together.
• All noted that through the process they’ve grown closer over time as they conclude their high school esports careers. Some team members said they plan to pursue collegiate E-Sports, while others consider different paths, including military service.
• More information on E-Sports in the Kern High School District can be found on the league’s website.

BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:

For years, e-sports has been touted as this niche thing, but with professional and amateur leagues all across the world, it’s clear to see that there’s a lot more to it including chances to further academic careers. I’m Sam Hoyle, your neighborhood reporter, and for five West High School students, they’ve made their way into the thick of it, bringing home a national championship.

“Going through that entire tournament, not dropping a single round the entire time, and then getting onto that big stage and being able to have a clean sweep, and then, you know, getting to celebrate right after is an amazing feeling,” said Burch.

Earlier this month, members of the West High School Vikings esports program traveled to San Antonio to compete in the EGF National High School Championship for Overwatch 2, a team-based first-person shooter, and obliterated the competition finishing undefeated. Hunter Burch, Eric Leyva, Ulysses Cervantes Carrillo, Erick Rodriguez, and Dismas Tapia have played together for a handful of years, and many said as they close out their high school careers, they’re happy to have done it together.

“It’s like a brotherhood, almost like a family. It’s like we first started. It’s like friends and we really know each other, and it like, really started to grow,” said Eric Leyva.

“It’s just a huge accomplishment. We were able to reach just working together throughout the years. We’ve always wanted to reach something way, way beyond, like, just the district league. So national championship was, like, super fun to work for,” said Cervantes Carrillo.

And like any other sports team, they’ll miss the grind being right next to one another fighting to become the best.

“This, the environment, the team you know, playing together. Do you think you’re gonna miss it?” asked 23ABC. “Yeah, honestly, like, I thought when we won, I thought I would cry or see my coach cry, because, like, that was the last experience we would have together. And that’s kind of like, I don’t know. It’s just like, hurts me that we won’t be together,” said Erick Rodriguez.

All five are seniors and have plans for after high school. Some plan to try and play e-sports at the collegiate level, others plan to take a step back. For Tapia, he plans to take a step back and enlist in the Navy, but he’s not discounting a comeback in the future.

“Maybe in the future. I was told that there’s actually e-sports in the Navy, so I might do that. But after I probably would if I ever go to college,” said Tapia.

And while they’ve been successful, West High isn’t the only school in the KHSD that has E-Sports. To learn more about the programs across the district, be sure to check out this story online. In Bakersfield, SH, YNR.

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Sports Take Years to Evolve Esports Changes Every 6 Months

In traditional sports, evolution is steady. Tactics develop over decades. Players train from childhood to achieve greatness over time. In esports, evolution happens every patch. The strategies change in weeks. Tournaments come monthly. New stars rise in months, not years. But this isn’t a debate of “which is better.”

Esports is not here to replace sports It’s a digital-native evolution of competitive entertainment, designed for a new generation, and now recognized on the world stage.

Sports: Legacy, Structure, and Tradition

Let’s look at some traditional sports:

• Cricket: Athletes like Virat Kohli take over a decade to reach peak form.
• Football: Legends like Messi and Ronaldo spent years building legacy through global leagues.
• Basketball: Structured progress from high school to NBA, with coaches taking years to build strategies and teams.

The pace is steady. The training is long-term. And the tournaments like the World Cup or Olympics come once every few years.

Esports: Fast-Paced, High-Pressure, and Global

Now compare this with esports:

• PUBG Mobile, Valorant, CS2, and Free Fire every update changes the game.
• Athletes like Jonathan, Simple, Faker,  Mortal, Sc0ut, Tenz, Mavi, and SkRossi reach the top in under 3 years.
• Meta shifts force coaches and teams to adapt daily. Coaches like Osmium, Amit, Vedz focus on Pubgm/Bgmi are well-known in the region. 

The competition? Non-stop. From qualifiers to monthlies to World Championships.

From Living Rooms to the Olympic Stage

What was once dismissed as “just gaming” is now a recognized global sport: Esports debuted as a medal event at the 2022 Asian Games. The IOC now officially hosts Olympic Esports Week and also announced Olympic Esports in 2027 which will be hosted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

More countries including India have formally recognized esports as part of their sports ecosystem. Esports has gone from living rooms to national flags and podiums.

So What’s the Real Difference?

Esports isn’t just fast. It’s:

• Global
• Inclusive
• Interactive
• Built for short attention spans and high engagement

It mirrors the world Gen Z lives in: digital, live, and always evolving.

• You don’t wait for trials.
• You grind.
• You stream.
• You win.

Esports doesn’t rival sports it expands it. It opens new paths, creates digital athletes, and represents a shift in how we define competition, identity, and legacy. But it’s time we give esports athletes the respect they deserve.

Because they train just as hard and compete just as fiercely, and now: they win for their country too.

What do you think? Are we giving esports professionals enough credit?

By Dylan Reubenking  / dylanr@chronline.com

Philip Harrington knew fairly quickly that the Tenino High School “Rocket League” esports team could be a championship contender.

After all, he understands what it takes to build a championship team. Harrington came to Tenino last year from Oklahoma, where he developed multiple state and national championship-winning esports programs.

His vision for the Tenino squad was ultimately correct.

The quartet of freshman captain Dawson Williams, eighth grader Weston Frank, eighth grader Nathan Pye and junior Eric Bowe Jr. took home the top prize in “Rocket League” at the Washington state Scholastic Esports Association High School State Championships on Sunday at the Lynnwood Event Center.

The Beavers competed in three different best-of-five matches through the playoffs for a total of 13 games to claim the trophy. Tenino swept Silas in three games, outlasted Selah in five games and triumphed over reigning back-to-back champion Kennedy Catholic in five games.

“They are organized, motivated self-starters,” Harrington said of his team. “Skill and talent will only get you so far. Dedication, teamwork and cooperation are what win matches. More often than not, we won against players this weekend who are, on paper, better than us.”

In his sixth year as an esports coach, Harrington said he had never seen dedication from a student athlete like Williams, who created a spreadsheet in the dawn of the regular season to track competitive rankings of all the players he could find information about.

“He wanted to scout ahead and see what opposition we had coming up so they could better prepare for each weekend,” Harrington said. “This is my sixth year as an esports coach, and I’ve had very few students over that time that would have, on their own, gone and made an organized spreadsheet. He’s one in a million.”

Williams knew the competition would be stiff throughout the season, but the Beavers had a hardworking bunch that had put in many hours of practice at school and late at night in pursuit of glory en route to a perfect 10-0 record.

“After I saw everybody’s rankings with the spreadsheet I made, I figured out that we were one of the best teams. All of our starters were all top 10, and Eric wasn’t too far behind,” Williams said.

Each teammate credited Pye for their interest in playing “Rocket League” as Pye is the top-ranked player in the state.

“Nathan is sort of the reason all of us are in ‘Rocket League.’ He helped teach me how to play ‘Rocket League’ early on, which made it more fun for me to continue on,” Williams said.

Bowe, the team’s alternate, said Frank and Williams passed on what they learned from Pye, and the starters praised Bowe for his contributions during the state playoffs.

“Dawson and Weston put me through the ringer and sat with me for almost three hours just grinding ‘Rocket League’ and showing me what I need to learn and what I should do,” Bowe said.

The Beavers were motivated during the state competition by their friends and parents in attendance cheering them on, especially in the championship-clinching match. With so much on the line, the players enjoyed the experience playing alongside each other at the highest level.

“It was an awesome experience. There was a lot of pressure, but because of Dawson’s spreadsheets, we knew they had some pretty good players,” Pye said.

Harrington was proud of how his team handled the pressure and communicated efficiently through the ups and downs of the long day of competition.

“In the middle of a match, what you’re thinking about is the plays going on in the match in front of you and literally nothing else. There’s no room in your head for nerves,” he said. “We’ve drilled really hard that the play that just happened is over and move on. We just focus on the now.”

The young team is hungry for more trophies to add to their collection and instill fear in opposing teams.

“We’re going to have to do so much grinding over the summer,” Frank said.

Harrington’s goal with the program is to push the players competitively and give them opportunities to pursue not only competition in the state and across the country but also potentially at the collegiate level.

“I want schools to be like, ‘Oh no, Tenino is here. We’re going to have a hard time winning,’ but I also want them to be like, ‘Oh great, Tenino is here. They’re a bunch of great people and great sportsmen,’” Harrington said. “I want us to have both a feared and loved reputation: feared as competitors and loved as young people and student athletes.”

Centralia High School’s “Super Smash Bros: Ultimate” team placed third at the state championships, bouncing back from a shutout loss to Southridge in the semifinals to beat Nooksack in the third-place match.

Event Background: Members of the media are invited to cover the STEAM Tank Challenge Finals, where nearly 50 students from ten public high schools will showcase their innovative projects with solutions to address real world problems. Created by the New Jersey School Boards Association, and co-sponsored by the US Army, the STEAM Tank Challenge promotes education in science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics (STEAM) for New Jersey’s public-school students. This competition empowers students to reimagine and redesign New Jersey with a focus on sustainability, health, equity, and safety for all residents. STEAM Tank also focuses on collaboration, critical thinking, and promotes real world skills. Student teams will present their plans in a ten-minute presentation, followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session with judges from the public and private sectors as well as higher education. Prize money for the competition is generously provided by the Educational Leadership Foundation of New Jersey. 

Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025 

Time: 9:15 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. 

Location: NJSBA Headquarters, 413 West State Street, Trenton, NJ 

Spokespersons: 

• Dr. Timothy Purnell, Executive Director/CEO, New Jersey School Boards Association 
• Jennifer Siehl – Senior Manager, STEAM Tank Challenge, New Jersey School Boards Association 
• WO1 Kevin McCurley, US Army 
• David C. Hespe, Executive Director, Educational Leadership Foundation of New Jersey  

Event Details: 

8:45 a.m. – Registration & Breakfast 

9:15 a.m. – Welcome remarks 

• Jennifer Siehl, NJSBA 
• Dr. Timothy Purnell, NJSBA 
• WO1 Kevin McCurley, US Army9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – Student presentations 
• 9:30 a.m.- Team Swarm Sentry – Edison High School (Conf Rm 1, 1^st Fl) 
• 9:30 a.m. – Team Shore Regional Steam Team (Conf Rm 2, 2^nd Fl) 
• 9:30 a.m. – Bicycle Chain Bodyguard – Manasquan High School (Conf Rm 3, 3^rd Fl) 
• 10:00 a.m. – Team Watering Can – Hawthorne High School (Conf Rm 1, 1^st Fl) 
• 10:00 a.m. – Team Shock Sleeve – Ridgewood High School (Conf Rm 2, 2^nd Fl)  
• 10:00 a.m. – Bacilli Baddies – Passaic County Technical Institute (Conf Rm 3, 3^rd Fl) 
• 10:30 a.m. – Team MVP’s – Passaic Academy for Science & Engineering (Conf Rm 1, 1^st Fl) 
• 10:30 a.m. – Team Vita Flow – Ridgewood High School (Conf Rm 2, 2^nd Fl)  
• 10:30 a.m. – Plastic Prophets – Passaic County Technical Institute (Conf Rm 3, 3^rd Fl) 
• 11:00 a.m. – STEM for Change – Mainland Regional High School (Conf Rm 1, 1^st Fl) 

11:30 a.m. – Lunch 

12:15 p.m. – Awards Ceremony 

12:30 p.m.  Dessert reception, photo opportunities 

1:00 p.m. – Event concludes 

Photography/Videography – Photos and video may be taken during the event. 

Day-of-Event Contact: Lori Perlow, 856-701-3170 or LPerlow@njsba.org 

Both of Riverdale School’s Reserve Fortnite Esports Teams have qualified for state finals this season.

Reserve Team 1 members are Josiah Thomas- Captain, Kail Wilson, Caleb Hoffman and Matt Heffelfinger.

Reserve Team 2 members are Josh Thomas- Captain, Marc Depuy, Syd Depuy and Zach Fletcher.

There will be 3 games played for the State Finals Match on Monday March 11.

Riverdale will be hosting a watch event of the stream on the video board in the school’s cafeteria starting at 4 Monday afternoon.

PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLA — Both North Georgia and Columbus State slipped down the leaderboard on the second day of the NCAA National Championships at the PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens.  UNG fell three places and sits in seventh while Columbus State fell to 12th.  Both teams were tied for fourth following the first round of play.

Missori S&T took the team lead in the event at -7 for the tournament.  UNG is 12 strokes back with Columbus State 20 back.  The top eight teams following the third and final round of stroke play tomorrow advance to the medal match bracket which begins on Thursday.  UNG is four strokes ahead of Lincoln Memorial and Central Oklahoma, who are tied for eighth.  CSU is four back.

The Nighthawsk struggled to begin their round, teeing off with the first groups at 7:30 am.  UNG was five-over as a team after nine holes, but rebounded on the back nine at -1.  Hunter Smith led the charge with a five-under 67, the low round of the day, and sits in a tie for first place on the individual leaderboard at -6 (71-67) for the tournament.  Smith had four birdies and just one bogey on his round, single-handedly lifting the Nighthawks into seventh with an eagle on the 18th hole.

Ethan Day and Colby Bennett were both one-over 74 with Hughes Threlkeld at three-over 77.  Day is tied for 33rd with Bennett in 46th and Threlkeld in 50th.

Columbus State played even par on the front nine, but struggled on the back with four of their five players posting round of three-over or more.  Pate Stansell shot a one-under 71 and sits in a tie for 11th (72-71).  Bernard Meyer is 25th with Martin Gruendemann in 38th and Russell Makepeace 83rd.

Georgia Southwestern’s Felipe Gomez, playing as an individual, followed up his opening-round 75 with a 74.  He sits in a tie for 50th.

Columbus State tee times for Wednesday’s final round begin at 10:15 am.  North Georgia will hit the course starting at 11:10 am.