MURRAY — As the KHSAA sanctioned dead period gets underway, there is still one team that is able to practice as a unit in game situations – the Calloway County esports team.
That’s because of the unique nature of esports. Everything takes place online inside of a video game, so there’s no need for face-to-face communication or interaction in order to play with your teammates.
Esports is one of the newer KHSAA sanctioned sports that does crown a state champion at the end of each season. There are three games that teams can compete in and each has a season.
First there is Rocket League. This game is one in which players control a car and play 3v3 soccer. Players attempt to direct a ball into a goal using their skills and teamwork. The cars can pick up boosts, flip, and essentially fly with the assistance of the boost. Professional esports include this game with some of the top teams earning big paychecks at major events.
The second game offered up by KHSAA is Smite. This game boasts over 30 million players worldwide and is a 5v5 battle where players control a god, goddess, or other mythological figure, and take part in team-based combat, using their abilities and tactics against other player-controlled gods and non-player-controlled minions. The object of the game is to take down a tower in each of the three “lanes” and then take out the oppositions “Titan,” which is a giant warrior who must be defeated to win the game. Each character has their own special abilities and attacks. This is what leads to the strategy part of the game.
The final game that is offered is League of Legends. There are many similarities to Smite with this game. Three lanes make up the map on which the 5v5 battle takes place. The characters are called ‘champions’ and before the game begins, each team goes through a banning phase. This critical phase allows the opportunity to eliminate champions that your opponents like to use, or ones that are considered ‘over-powered’ meaning they are almost game-breaking in how powerful they are in comparison to other champions.
It’s the final game, League of Legends, in which the Calloway County Laker Legends compete. It’s played in the spring, and up until the stoppage for dead period, the Laker Legends were 7-1, ranked fifth in the state, and were in prime position to compete for a title.
Prior to the decision by KHSAA, head coach Caide Fraser received an email stating that the hope would be to continue the season “due to the online nature” of the sport and that players could participate from home. However, the KHSAA dead period mandated that any and all sanctioned sports would enter into a dead period and that included esports.
Still, the players can continue to practice in-game with each other. Unlike baseball and softball, these players are able to get scrimmages in if they wish to. Every team in the state has their roster available on the site that is used for competition and along with the player names is their gamer tag. The gamer tag is a unique name chosen by each player for online gameplay and makes it possible for others to find and contact you via the game.
“They can log on and play,” Fraser said. “That’s just like me logging in on my XBOX and playing. It is heavily encouraged that they go practice at home.”
At the beginning, the Laker Legends embraced the opportunity to play. Things weren’t serious, but after a hot start, things changed.
“We had 10 guys so we just mixed-and-matched and let them play,” Fraser said. “The first two matches, we didn’t have a starting five. We called out a five at 2:30 p.m. the first week and they went in and won two matches. The next Friday, we called out a different five. They went in and played two matches and won and we were 4-0. We looked at the standings and there were people already losing and we realized we had a chance to bump this thing up.”
So, the team was given a choice. They could continue to mix it up every week and play for the sheer fun of the game, or they could decide that they wanted to be the best and put their best players into every match.
“We had a meeting with them and told them, ‘When we created this club, we thought it would be a little more laid back because it’s our first year, and here we are winning games. We want you guys to make the decision. Do you want everybody to play? Or do you want us to have the best opportunity to win,’” Fraser said. “They all agreed they wanted the best opportunity to win. So we have who we believe are our best five starting.”
The current starters for the Laker Legends are Jesus Perez, Trip Cornelius, Brendan Moehller, Ethan Caine, and Maxwell Hedges. Fraser said that joining this team has changed the players lives for the better. They have expanded their social groups and, for at least one of the players, it has changed the way they view grades.
“We take it just as seriously as any other sport,” Fraser said. “If they are failing classes, they don’t get to play. If I talk to their teachers and they are being bad in class, they don’t play. I’ve got a kid that struggles with grades, and he cares about grades now because of esports. He’s flipped it around and he’s a starter for us. It’s cool that we are reaching those kids too.”
As a team ranked fifth in the state, the credit goes two places. One, the players for executing a gameplan, and two, to the other coach behind them during the games, Caleb Reinhardt.
“He’s a wizard when it comes to this stuff,” Fraser said. “He’s catching stuff before it even happens … You can tell he’s spent a lot of time playing the game.”
One of the biggest coaching tools that they are allowed to use is the website that KHSAA utilizes to set up rosters and matches. The site they use allows teams to scout their opponents. Things pertinent to their game, such as which champions the players typically use, how well they’ve scored, what strategies they employ, are all readily available, so it just becomes a matter of being able to translate what you have access to.
“We can scout them, just like you would a basketball team,” Fraser said. “With coach Reinhardt being able to look at those champions, and with his experience with League of Legends, he will be like, ‘Oh, well we need to know that we should use this champion, this champion, and this champion,’ and he will go to our team and ask, “How comfortable do you feel about using this guy,’ and we are 7-1. A ton of the credit goes to him.”
Coaching an esports team is just like any other sport in the ability to communicate with the players. Like a basketball coach telling his players where they need to be defensively on a play or what area of the floor they should attack on the offensive end, the coaches for the esports team can be right behind the players telling them where they need to be or what they need to do.
“Reinhardt, he is in his element when you’re in one of those matches,” Fraser said. “I encourage anyone, if we get to (resume this year), or even next year (if we don’t), to come watch a match. It’s fun.”
As for now the Laker Legends will continue to practice in their own time with their own equipment, but as a team in actual games. With the growing popularity of esports, who knows? Maybe one or more of these guys will go on to have a professional career. They are ranked fifth in the state, after all.
