Westpark School has put together a new school team in the last two years. Jason Siemens has helped organize a pair of Esports teams made up of high school students enrolled at Westpark. Siemens describes where the idea to start this up stemmed from.
“A guy named Jed Neudorf, who works at the school with us, and I were talking about what we liked about high school and what it was missing,” says Siemens. “We discussed how video games could absolutely be the kind of thing that sports were for a lot of people. We thought if there was something like that in our high school days, we probably would’ve really benefited from it.”
Siemens is the head coach of the school’s Rocket League team, which is a video game based on soccer but uses cars instead of humans as the players. He says this isn’t the only Esports team they have going either.
“Right now, the two games we are offering are Valorant and Rocket League,” Siemens explains. “Our Valorant team isn’t quite a full five-person squad but our Rocket League team is a full three-person team. The Rocket League team is competing in a North American league right now.”
He says they have also experimented with Overwatch but he notes they are mainly trying to go with free games for the moment. Siemens says the Rocket League team is taking part in the High School Esports League and have played against several teams from all over North America. He adds they play a best-of-seven series on Thursday nights which they stream live on their Facebook page.
The head coach describes the major benefits that have come to the players on these Esports teams.
“We’ve seen some kids who might’ve had some lower confidence, develop more confidence,” says Siemens. “We’ve seen kids who maybe have some rough edges, learn to communicate with each other and have a good time. We’ve seen kids who already were natural leaders, developing those skills even further.”
To view any previous or upcoming matchups from the Westpark Rocket League team, click here.
