Schools across the country are continuing to get Esports teams, and Wilmington Friends is one of them. Esports will be a winter sport, and Mr. Greenman, athletic director at Wilmington Friends, states, “I hope that this will allow for more students to play a winter sport, because as of now, winter sports have the least amount of athletes competing.”
According to Mr. Greenman, the school will compete in Madden, College Football, Mario Kart, and Rocket League competitions across the East Coast. Due to the state of Delaware not having any esports competitions, our school will compete against Pennsylvania schools.
Many gaming students praise this, like Uday Bhuva ‘29, who says, “I would love to compete in Rocket League competitions, and hopefully with some of my buddies.” A former Rocket League player, Noah Underwood, has volunteered to coach this Esports team, and he says, “I think this will be a fun experience for me and for the students,”
The goal of this team is to give students more social skills and scholarship opportunities. The popularity of college esports teams, this will allow students to continue to compete at the college level. Competing at the next level will allow students to attend some of the best esports schools in the country, for example, UC Irvine, Miami (Ohio), Georgia Tech, and Cal Berkley. The college guidance office hopes that this will help more students to get involved in extracurricular activities to boost their applications to get into some of these high-tech colleges.
Mr. Greenman is creating this esports program because of his enjoyment of esports in recent years, and wants to pursue his goal of creating his own team. He hopes this Friends team can create future esports talents, and grow it into one of the best esports teams in the world. Mr. Greenman states, “I have already started recruiting top talent from all over the East Coast.” He wants the team to compete in which he says is an up and coming esports game.
The goal for Mr. Greenman is to build the program and produce talent for his future gaming team that he hopes to call either Project 302 or the First State Phantoms. The name for our school’s esports team will be either The Silent Seekers or 1748 Esports. Mr. Greenman and Mr. Aldridge have agreed that we will turn the Library into a brand new state of the art gaming arena where our esports team will compete. They say we will have the balcony loop around the library for event seating. People will watch from the top while the gamers play down on the floor.They would also like to add a big screen or Jumbotron so fans can see what is going on down on the ground.
The esports team will be a great addition to the athletics program, hoping to bring many more titles and athletes to WFS.
