By Jacob W. May, Erica DesJardins & Ty Passalacqua
Focus
Midland HS
1st Place Division 2, News Writing
Sports News Story
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Lead features interesting, important angle
- Uses colorful, lively style
- Avoids cliches, editorializing
- Displays knowledge of sports; uses understandable terms
- Shows research/interviewing skills; emphasizes how & why
- Effective use of facts/quotes
- Proper diction/grammar; use of the third person
- Unity/coherence
Last summer, sixteen-year-old Kyle Giersdorf, screen name “Bugha”, took home $3 million after winning the Fortnite World Cup in New York. This was the largest prize ever for a single player in a video game tournament, and was a key event in the growing popularity of esports. Now, high schools across Michigan, including Midland High, are starting their own esports teams. Colleges, such as Northwood University, are starting their own esports programs. Midland High’s new team has 33 players and participates in the Michigan High School Esports Federation (MiHSEF), a freeto- join, non-profit league created by educators for students. Although the league has no fee to play, there is a $75 fee to join the esports team in order to offset the cost to play at Northwood University’s esports arena. Joining the MiHSEF allows the team to play ten different high schools in Michigan. Within each team are different subsets that each focus on a specific game. This school year’s games include Fortnite, Overwatch, League of Legends, Rocket League, and Super Smash Bros. Coach William Collison has had high exposure to video games because he watches his son play online with friends. After hearing of Giersdorf’s win and his $3 million prize, he started to become more interested in video games, leading him to get in contact with Midland High’s athletic director, Eric Albright, to start the team. Collison would compare the esports team to other sports at MHS. “They’ll go out of tournaments and matches just beat because you’re stressed, you’re going crazy,” Collison said. “It’s physical, it’s mental, it’s a battle, it’s something totally different that people are just now starting to explore and see that, yes, it is a sport.” Junior Nathanial Knapp is a captain during both the fall and winter seasons of a six-player Overwatch team and a twoplayer Fortnite team. “You are the one that people are relying on to have a good decisionmaking process and to come up with a team that will work, while also factoring in everyone’s different skill set,” Knapp said. Most of the captains are chosen out of the senior class, although Knapp was chosen because of his leadership skills and experience. As an Overwatch captain, he chooses his team’s characters. He also sets up a general gameplan for matches in both Overwatch and Fortnite. Knapp remembers playing video games for most of his life and is happy to finally have a place to play in a competitive environment with people who share his interest. “I got into competitive games around age 11, and have just been playing since,” Knapp said. “Where I live there aren’t very many people who play, so when I come here and there are 50-some kids that are playing the same game, it’s good to actually have a chat about something, instead of with someone who has no idea what I’m talking about.”