George County is adding Esports to one of the many sports students can play.
Esports, or electronic sports, is competitive online video game tournaments and turns online gaming into a spectator sport. It replicates the feeling of watching a professional sporting event, except instead of actually watching an outside event, fans watch online gamers compete against one another.
Like traditional sports, Esports are broken down into competitive leagues and tournaments. This form of online gaming is generally new to the world of sports, and involves all sorts of genres of gaming.
The games that are available to play for the team currently are Rocket league, Hearthstone, Madden NFL 26, Super Mario Smash Bros Ultimate, Splatoon 3, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, NBA 2K26, Chess, College Football’26, Pokemon UNITE, Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals.
This year Esports coach Caleb Watt has great expectations for his team, “ I expect good grades, attendance and behavior very similar to any other team and being a good digital citizen and balancing school and sports,” Coach Watt said.
Esports had about 50 people show up to the interest meeting and only now have 16 members. There are 12 middle schoolers and four high schoolers, one from each grade. While the team isn’t big enough to play a multiplayer game like Marvel Rivals, they will be able to play a game like chess.
Esports has two seasons, Spring and Fall. The spring season is from September to December, and spring is from February to May.
“We want to grow our team for our spring season. I’m very happy with the 16 athletes I have currently, but if I could add any more it would be great,” Watt said.
Practices are mostly digital and at home. It works through streams and gives critiques and feedback on gameplay from peers. On Thursdays, some members can stay and play at George County Middle School.
Coach Watt’s only serious problem is students’ maturity and expectations for being on the team, “ The only problem with students is maturity and what they expect to be doing here. We want to get some of our players into college teams.” coach Wat said.
How Watt became the coach for Esports was last year when another coach left and he saw potential in the program and wanted to continue it. “ I grew up playing video games, and I personally think this will be something big in the future,” Watt said
Coach Watt implores other students to join, “ Anyone is welcome to join Esports even if you’re not good at any sport.”
