WAUKESHA — Waukesha South made a pretty good first impression in the esports world.
In its inaugural season competing in the Wisconsin High School Esports Association (WIHSEA), the Blackshirts took home the Division 1 spring state championship on Saturday, May 14, by defeating Oak Creek in the championship round at Northcentral Technical College (NTC) in Wausau.
South won the state title in ‘Rocket League,’ essentially a vehicular soccer video game. There was also a tournament bracket involving ‘Smite,’ a third-person battle arena game.
Andrew Yep, a math teacher at South who runs the school’s game club, was approached by students last year with the idea of also starting up an esports squad.
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“I don’t have much of a background in esports,” Yep said. “We do a lot of tabletop games and things like that. The kids approached me wanting to start an esports team. WISHEA seemed to be the association to contact.”
Conveniently enough, Mike Dahle, who became the president of WIHSEA in 2017 and teaches business education at Elkhorn Area High School, lives in Waukesha and helped get the ball rolling on South’s inclusion.
“It usually runs two seasons, so in the fall and spring,” Yep said. “We weren’t able to get into the fall but we’re hoping next year we would. A season will typically run eight weeks, and then two weeks for playoffs. Then students meet in person for the semifinals and finals.” It wasn’t until January when South got the breakthrough it needed.
“We actually don’t play at school grounds,” Yep said. “There’s a local gaming lounge in Milwaukee, Tier 1 Gaming Lounge, that was fantastic, and Tier 1 has been great and flexible. Even when they’re normally closed they’ve been willing to open up their doors for us so we could go in and make sure we competed fairly against our opponents.”
Fast-forward a few months, and South assured it would make the trip to NTC with a 3-0 victory over Racine Park in the quarterfinals on May 3. “This spring season it was ‘Smite,’ kind of like ‘League of Legends,’” Yep said. “It’s a five-person team and they compete. ‘Rocket League’ is a three-person team with a sub. Usually they play best out of five, and then finals is best out of seven.”
The Blackshirts earned their No. 1 seed in the ‘Rocket League’ state tournament by showing their prowess during the regular season, as they didn’t drop a single game. The finals wouldn’t wind up being a battle of top seeds, however, nor would victory come easy.
“In the semifinals we won against (No. 3) Superior,” Yep said. “We won 3-0 against them. We did go to Game 7 in the finals against (No. 2) Oak Creek. It was a real nail-biter. Oak Creek was one of the toughest teams we faced in the regular season, and they upset Racine Case to make the finals.”
The Waukesha South Esports team consisted of David Johnson, Lucas Menzer, Dante Herrera, Penn Gilchrist and CJ Ziegler. Competitions were streamed on the team’s Twitch stream at Blackshirt_ Esports throughout the season, and there was plenty of behind-the-scenes work aside from the actual gaming that helped make it all possible.
“Big shoutout to our esports team,” Yep said. “Some students have been casting our stream on our Twitch channel. Students volunteer to be announcers. There’s kind of an IT coding aspect. Some of the players created overlays.”
Much of that was new to Yep, who has always had a love of games. He’s been running the game club at Waukesha South for roughly 15 years.
“It’s two different kinds of activities,” Yep said. “The game club … it’s more like social games, board games, tabletop games, card games. There’s not much of a competition aspect to it. Esports we’ll have video games where we tried to actively compete with other schools in the area.”
Since the conclusion of the spring season, South has continued to hone its video game skills. On Sunday, the Blackshirts claimed Tier 1’s Rocket League Battle for Milwaukee and the gaming lounge has plans for similar events in the future.
But while that level of competition may not be for everyone, there’s a place for anyone in Yep’s game club at South.
“I think that’s one of the reasons I started the game club at South,” Yep said. “A lot of students that maybe didn’t participate in normal activities like sports, they needed another outlet.”
