The Riverside Brookfield High School esports team hosted the second Upstate Eight Conference esports tournament on Saturday, April 18.
Seventy students from seven high schools in the conference flocked to the school to compete in video games ranging from Nintendo’s crossover fighting “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” and quirky racing “Mario Kart” to the football simulation “EA Sports FC 26” and similar titles.
Megan Welch, the coach for RB’s student team, said her players came second overall behind students from Elgin High School, though several her students walked away with a medal for performing well in an individual game.
“It was a good day. We had a wildly convoluted point system for an overall winner of the conference,” she said. “Elgin has a really big team, so they can fill out their roster to capacity. We didn’t have somebody for every single game, so the points you got for different events depended on how many schools were doing that event.”
The tourney lasted from 10 a.m. to about 3 p.m., Welch said, including breaks between games and some downtime that she dedicated to celebrating all of the outgoing seniors with speeches and gift bags.
“All kinds of sports have senior nights if they have a home tournament. Sometime in their season, they’ll have a home meet and they’ll [recognize] the graduating seniors,” she said. “We only had one graduating senior on our team, but we thought, there’s a lot of seniors in the thing, and nobody’s getting a senior night, so we decided to do a little recognition.”
Welch said running the tournament was a family affair for her home team, with many of her players helping to set up and take down the stations for playing games, directing people around the building and troubleshooting technical issues.
“I had a lot of wonderful parents donate a lot of food so there could be a coaches’ hospitality room, and also my players could eat,” she said. “I put a lot of the stuff on the kids to do, so, Friday afternoon, IT brought down all the equipment. I was like, ‘Go forth and set up.’”
She said it was heartwarming to see her own students interact with each other, celebrating their own micro-achievements and improvements in gameplay even when they didn’t come first in their event. When it came down to one last match to determine whether one of her students came first or second in the game, she said she had another member of the team give him a pep talk.
“Now it’s the grand finals, so whoever loses that one is second place, and whoever wins is first place,” she said. “I go get Declan, and I’m like, ‘Go talk to Daniel. What am I going to do to give him a pep talk?’ … They chatted and had a little break, and then he came back and was very decisive on winning that.”
Now that RB’s tournament is over, Welch said the team is preparing to play in the Illinois High School Association’s sectional tournament, which will determine which teams proceed to the state tournament.
“We agonized for a long time about who was going to do what event because some of these kids are good at multiple things. They play Smash and Mario Kart; who is going to do solos and do crew?” she said. “They always tell me, ‘Don’t say that [we’re going to win], bro. What if it doesn’t happen?’ But I don’t know; I got a vibe. It’s a good feeling.”
She said the team truly belongs to the students due to the small size of RB’s esports community, but at the same time, she’s enjoyed watching her students improve and progress over time.
“We’re all passionate about it. We love it, and I’m here for it. Ultimately, I can do as much recruiting as I want, but it’s these kids who bring other kids here,” she said. “If they didn’t come, then there wouldn’t be practice.”
While the esports season may be coming to a close for this school year, Welch emphasized that there are always ways to get involved, whether you’re a student at RB or an older member of the community.
“There’s always room for more teachers and adults to be involved in a lot of different ways,” she said. “You don’t have to know how to play the games. The kids play the games. This is what I’ve always said: They just need somebody who’s going to be there for them, who’s going to be excited about it with them, who’s going to provide them a space.”
