There are a staggering 25 thousand people scattered throughout Arizona that are competing on high school E-Sports teams.

E-Sports may be just getting its sea legs right now but soon it will be up and sailing into unknown territories. This is the result of the drive and the passion being put in by all the kids who want to see this become an option for their future.

“When I first started this club I just started working, and I stayed up till 3 in the morning working on the server and excel spreadsheets,” senior Derek Ho and VP of the Esports team explains,“Everything I did for this club I did out of the belief that we could become something big.”

Ho says,“It’s been a dream of mine and I know for a fact that it’s been the dream of many others.”

Ho spoke for all the players when referring competing for a scholarship, and a future in professional E-Sports.

Mesquite High School challenged Perry’s League of Legends team, who graciously accepted. Head coach Brian Dahlem, has been teaching at Perry for three years as the computer science teacher and now runs the E-Sports/Gaming club.

Dahlem explains,“I always wanted to be a computer science teacher for a very long time.” However ironically, Dahlem had worked at Mesquite for 15 years none of which were spent teaching computer science, which drove him to move to PHS.

Computers and consoles are basically the football field that athletes play on. When it comes to it, the fields got rained on and left our contenders in the mud. This is because the necessary technology is lacking, although the Arizona Interscholastic Administration is working day and night to figure out the how to resolve this issue.

CUSD athletic director Marcus Williams shares that once they launch their platform then, “We will have to get with our Information Systems Department to find out how schools can use technology to compete.”

Another major issue is arising because of all the participants, because there is only three people allowed on a team for games such as Rocket League and for the rest of them are at most five players per team. This has lead to a Varsity and JV set up of the teams, although a spot on a team will not be determined by age they will be fought over and judged purely based skill. Which allows students to achieve their dreams before their first even seeing their diploma, and not have to wait till they are out of college or until a computer science position opens up.