The Tracy Area High School Esports team is back at it and in a big way, once again qualifying for state competition.
Esports isn’t about “sports,” per se. Instead, it is a form of online gaming competition using video games such as Minecraft and Valorant. This will be the school team’s fourth year going to state.
“We’ve been playing Marvel Rivals all year, in the Southwest Division of the Minnesota Varsity League,” said coach Craig Polkow. “We played two preseason games and eight regular season games.”
The top two teams from the final tournament in the middle of February qualify for state. Other state tournament participants are Lakeview, Lakeville, Fergus Falls, Totino-Grace, Mahtomedi, Albert Lea and Little Falls.
Htoo, the lone senior on the team, said Esports gives students who aren’t involved in things like athletics or fine arts an outlet that brings out their competitive nature.
“Sometimes when you’re just playing games, it gets repetitive, and you don’t really ‘feel’ as much … over time, it just becomes stale, said Htoo, who says he is competitive by nature. “With Esports, it’s competitive. You want that challenge for yourself to be better than everyone else. So that gives you that drive.”
Esports veteran Kaden Hookum, a junior at TAHS, likes the team aspect of Esports, which makes it similar in some ways to traditional sports.
“It is like a sports team … like a quarterback in football, we get to guide the game our way and practice through all of that, learn different ways to counter different things that other team might do,” said Hookum, the team captain. “You learn different play styles throughout the entire game, all as a team.”
According to the Brittanica webstie, the first recognized instance of an Esports competition was in 1972 at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory for the Intergalactic Spacewar! Olympics, in which people competed for a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.
In 1980, a more mainstream contest, the National Space Invaders competition, took place in which thousands of competitors vied to set a high score in the game, which was first created by the video game company Taito in Japan.
The Esports world took another step toward a more organized landscape in 1982 when businessman Walter Day established Twin Galaxies, an organization dedicated to recording players’ high scores on different arcade games.
In Esports, two teams compete against each other online. Teammates communicate through text chat through the main website.
“It’s a first-person style game — you’re playing as a character who you see in front of you and you see your enemies or your allies,” Polkow said.
Polkow said the team has gained students every year; this is the first year the team has consisted of six members. Last year, a five-member team played Minecraft. Certain titles are offered to schools from the MNVL, such as Minecraft, Valorant, Marvel Rivals, League of Legends, Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers.
“They set the titles that are offered and we go based off of interest of our students,” Polkow said. “Do we have enough students that are interested in these games to make a team? You need five to make a team. We didn’t have the four required for Minecraft this year because four of them graduated.”
Marvel Rivals is a relatively new game, and Htoo said that could work in the TMB team’s favor. He feels the team has a shot at going far in the competition.
“Most of the other games have been out for three or four years, so people had mastered them,” he said. “This game (Marvel Rivals) is recently introduced. I feel like everybody in the league is still learning the game, and the majority of teams are on equal footing.”
The three-day state tournament for Marvel Rivals will be held on March 13 at St. Cloud State University. All teams will play at once to start, and then brackets will be set up. Each game lasts for about four hours.
Besides being given the ability to complete, Hookum said he has developed relationships with kids from other schools that he otherwise wouldn’t have.
“I am going to be staying longer because when we went to state with Minecraft last year I made friendships with some kids from other schools and I still talk to them,” he said. “I’m staying until Saturday to watch my friend.”
Other team members are Gabriel Torkelson, Cash Wold, Ismael Reyes, Kaden Hookum and Eli Lembke.
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With Esports, it’s competitive. You want that challenge for yourself to be better than everyone else. So that gives you that drive.
— TAHS SENIOR AND ESPORTS MEMBER BAW RAY HTOO
