Every morning an all out battle goes on in room 1613. Fists fly. Kicks crash. Winners gloat and losers walk. It’s not actual battle, it’s practice for the ESports Club. Twelve students currently compete in VHSL sanctioned tournaments, playing League of Legends and Super Smash Bros.competitively against teams from other schools.
If you want to compete on the Lightridge ESports team you have to go through a tryout where you play in a match with the team.
“If someone is interested in the game, I have the captain of both my teams allow them to play in some activity they’re doing and very quickly we can tell if they can hang or not,” said ESports Coach Greg Zawtowski.
The League of Legends and Super Smash Bros. teams practice separately.
“Super Smash Bros. is typically here every morning. For League of Legends it’s a little bit more at home, but we do meet weekly to talk through some strategies and then play,” said Zawtowski.
During the season, the team plays smaller games against individual schools. Their chances of getting into the tournament and getting a higher seed in the tournament are dependent on the results of the weekly games.
“Every week we have a game scheduled on Tuesdays at 4:00,” said Zawistowski.
In December, the team competed in the Fall Season League of Legends tournament and got runner up.
For the Super Smash Bros. tournament there were 160+ teams in the state and Lightridge was ranked in the 60’s, which wasn’t enough for them to move on. For League of Legends, the requirements are different because there are less teams that compete. They advanced to the Semifinals by being in the top 4 teams out of 12 in the state. They were practicing throughout their weekly games during the season.
“Spencer Hong did a great job of prepping most of the team in their role and with champ selection,” said Zawistowski. “There’s a whole phase where they have to get rid of other characters that they don’t want to play against because it could hurt them. They also watched a lot of video review.”
The team played in an all day tournament that included semifinals and finals.
“We had live commentators for the entire thing so a live stream was playing overtop of where we were playing,” said Zawistowski.
The Bolts fell short of the win to Chantilly High School.
“We were playing more as a team than individually, which is not what you want to do in League of Legends,” said League of Legends Team Captain Spencer Hong who was disappointed with the results.
The loss was used as motivation going into the Spring season.
“We weren’t going to participate in the Spring tournament, but losing the last one made us want to do it,” said Hong.
