Students from St. Anne Catholic High School in Lakeshore, Ont. have advanced to the international playoffs in PlayVS Rocket League.
Rocket League is a multi-player, arcade-style video game that’s grown in popularity, as have esports, showing up in more schools as an extracurricular option.
“The tournament is about over 80 high school teams across North America and so we’ve competed in playoffs and now we’re in an eight-week round robin, and heading to the finals tomorrow,” said student and team member Chet Petro.
“We played really well throughout the season and we’re currently the number one ranked team.”
Vanessa Tran is the head of content creation for the team, and a commentator on the streams.
“I think that it’s really good that it’s being encouraged in schools, because it’s not just like gaming,” she said. “It touches like a lot into technology and like even business if you’re into content creation.”
Tran says in her computer programming course, she’s able to work on things related to gaming.
“And there’s an incredible amount of communication between players and between sections of our team as well,” she said.
“Like our generation have had a lot of experience with just technology in general, and video games are a great way to connect like a whole ton of people all at once.”
Nick Seguin, a student and team member, said being able to compete at this level brings together his school community and connects them with others, too.
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“Most other sports need to be very athletic, and esports isn’t like that, so it opens up larger community to the school and all the students who normally wouldn’t partake in extracurriculars,” said Seguin. “it helps, for them, to build a team aspect.”
Seguin said he hopes to compete for St. Clair College next year.
