There’s a rumor around that video games might become the new sport of choice in the scholastic environment.
You read that right, and it’s under serious consideration.
Webster’s says: “Sport /noun/...an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition.” I played sports at all levels, elementary school, junior high, high school, college and some professional, and much of it was basketball. Like most boys, I played Little League baseball up through Babe Ruth and some high school. I also experimented with football, golf, track, and all of which were firmly based on the preoccupation of physical performance. My obvious sport of choice was on the hardwoods, which eventually became part of my skill set as a coach. All the sports I played where dominated by physical attributes, such as running, jumping, strength and athleticism, reinforcing Webster’s definition.
My wife, Ann, is involved with teaching the game/sport of chess to teachers and children. She is an officer of the charitable organization: The Giving Circle/The Giving Circle Africa, which is an astounding story. They sponsor and run two schools in Uganda, which has grown leaps and bounds since its creation seven years ago. They use chess as a teaching tool as well as recreation that includes deaf students in the program. In Uganda, next to soccer, chess is considered a very important sport. It’s part of their love for competition!
Video gaming: Called e-sports, is possibly about to become the next high school sport. It seems that some major cities in the past couple of years have had high school e-sports Invitationals. Chicago, for instance, has a VG city-wide tournament where the top 16 high schools compete against each other for the city trophy and to be crowned the video games’ champion. I read an article by John Keilman, a contact reporter of the Chicago Tribune, from May of 2017, who not only wrote about these games, but he justifies their existence as a scholastic sport. Keilman interviewed a video game coach from a Chicago high school in the township of Burbank, Reavis High School. Their coach, Tony Pape compared the interscholastic video games to NASCAR. Pape said, “They’re sitting in a chair, they’re using controls, same as the kids here. Gaming is not as physically demanding but it’s mentally demanding. It demands (Gaming) a lot of teamwork, coordination and practice. I consider it a sport, absolutely.”
Hold on to your hat, there are colleges recruiting this new kind of athlete, the video gamer. Fortune magazine had an article about athletic scholarships for video gamers. Los Angeles has a collegiate tournament called “League of Legends College Championships.” The article in Fortune, written by Chris Morris, from September 2017, points out that at Robert Morris University in Chicago, there are 80 members of the schools’ e-sports teams, who all get scholarships that cover 70 percent of their annual tuition.
In my research I found that there are presently 42 schools of higher education that are members of the newly formed organization, NACE, National Association of Collegiate E-sports. This organization was formed in 2016.
It seems that NCAA has expressed interest in adding e-sports to its range of collegiate sports and NACE has expressed that their organization is interested in working with the NCAA.
For us novices concerning video games, Google says: League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena with video games developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows and MacOS. This gaming system was not designed or developed for colleges or high schools only. So, the invitational mentioned above used the League of Legend as its format.
The title coined for these gamers is a refreshingly new label, “cyberathletes.” Don’t know who coined that term but it fits the functionality of video gamers. The future of scholastic and collegiate athletics is about to take on a whole different vision of competition, as we begin to redefine the nature of sports. There will be walls to climb and bridges to build, it will become an insert in the future of and the further pioneering of Title IX. I feel that we must give it a chance because, believe me, there will be plenty of support and there might be some resistance.
