Esports

The NHIAA Rocket League esports tournament held at SNHU included a live-streamed feed of matches with live commentating by Madhav Patel (back), a game simulation and programming student, who also assists in SNHU’s esports team functioning ALEXANDER RAPP—Monitor staff

Bedford’s Rocket League players, Liam Haworth (L) and Muhammad Wasi Baloch (R) discuss in-game strategy while playing against Manchester Memorial. ALEXANDER RAPP—Monitor staff

Pembroke’s Rocket League team comprises (left to right) Belal Ben Yahya, Samaya Timilsina, Camden Ouellette and coach Brandon Rich. They discussed their game plan and strategies to beat Bedford in the preliminary round-robin. ALEXANDER RAPP—Monitor staff

Pembroke’s Belal Ben Yahya locked into Rocket League while playing Bedford again in the quarterfinal round of the NHIAA’s first esports tournament of the year. ALEXANDER RAPP—Monitor staff

Pembroke’s Samaya Timilsina (back) and Camden Ouellette (front) compete against Bedford. ALEXANDER RAPP / Monitor staff

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Virtual cars flew across the screens as competitors in the NHIAA’s first competitive Rocket League state esports championship played the popular soccer-like game that uses race cars as the players, all vying to score a goal in the opposing team’s net.

Teams gathered in Southern New Hampshire University’s esports arena on Saturday morning to become the top varsity Rocket League players in the state. Ultimately, Londonderry won it all by sweeping Plymouth, 3-0, in a best-of-five final.

After years of trial and high schools investing in providing more opportunities for students who may not be involved in traditional athletics, the event could serve as an indication of what’s to come.

Rocket League is a free-to-play vehicular soccer video game where teams face off with customized “rocket-powered” cars. It is considered one of the most popular online multiplayer games with over 10 million copies sold and over 40 million players registered.

Tim Fowler, esports director at SNHU, helped the NHIAA organize the tournament there and has looked to grow the sport. SNHU currently offers multiple scholarships for different esports games, including Rocket League, and has 36 student-athletes registered.

Their gaming arena includes 18 monitors for live gaming, an announcer booth, current technology and more. Fowler’s focus has been on providing opportunities past just gaming, with work-study programs in content creation, broadcasting and technology operations.

“It’s great. I love to see it because I knew before we started this program that students were doing this themselves anyway. They were just doing it from home, without structure and without a team necessarily, just playing with friends,” he said. “I’m happy to see that that’s happening and from a recruitment perspective, it’s great. We’ve already had students in the past couple of years come directly from NHIAA finals, and the events that we have done, come and play at SNHU.”

For tournament purposes, each school participated in teams of three with one substitute and a coach. First, the nine teams played a round-robin in pools of three teams to determine seeding. They then moved on to a bracket format where they played best-of-three matches in quarterfinals and then best-of-five matches for subsequent rounds.

Pembroke Academy was one of the teams participating and had played in last year’s trial tournament. The Spartans team, coached by Brandon Rich, was made up of starting juniors Samaya Timilsina, Belal Ben Yahya, Camden Ouellette and Trystan Currier, the team’s substitute.

“Video games have a stigma. Nerd clubs have a stigma, and so I made it a point to start a (Dungeons & Dragons) club, and the opportunity to start a video game club ran right along with that,” said Rich. “Last year, being able to walk into the school with a trophy from the NHIAA to go up on our shelves that said New Hampshire Esports Pembroke Academy with their names signed on the back, was a chance for this group of kids that get seen academically, but don’t get seen in the recreational space nearly as much, to now have their trophy up on the board.”

Unfortunately for the Spartans, they lost to the Bedford Bulldogs in the round-robin and faced them again in the quarterfinal. The best-of-three matches in that round were extremely close. The Spartans won the first, 2-0, but in the second match the Bulldogs came back to win with an overtime golden goal, 5-4. In the third, Pembroke was outclassed by Bedford’s strong defense and fell 4-0.

“I feel great about this. It feels good to play video games competitively, especially for my high school. I wish like it would be more popular in the school because I know some other people who really play Rocket League. They just don’t know about it,” said Timilsina after the loss. “I feel like that playing video games, maybe is, let me say, weird. That’s what a bunch of them think, and probably why a lot of the kids who are probably really good at Rocket League on their own don’t come to play for us. And I feel like more advertisement and more popularity will be better for this and help us in the future.”

Pembroke has a relatively small esports program at the moment, as they have run into some tech issues, which are common with a high school’s wifi security, so the team mostly trains remotely together but they are still provided the structure of competition.

“It’s fantastic. When the state announced that they were initially piloting the program, it was something that had been in the back of my mind since I became an educator,” said Rich. “This niche group of students doesn’t always get that representation at the school.”

Esports are growing rapidly worldwide, and as schools adopt it, it’s providing opportunities for students to earn scholarships, recognition and build friendships that go far beyond the confines of school walls.

Rich, and other coaches present at the tournament, explained that the surge of esports has been beneficial for their students to form stronger bonds with their peers and to take pride in representing their schools. Similarly, even though the Spartans were disappointed by their early exit they enjoyed the experience.

Alexander Rapp can be reached at arapp@cmonitor.com