After winning the first eSports Arkansas High School State Championship in the video game Rocket League, members of the Bryant High School eSports team have nicknamed themselves “the Founding Fathers.”
“I feel like a rock star,” sophomore Nick Barton said.
Bryant defeated Greenwood in the finals on May 11 by sweeping the Bulldogs in a best of seven match. All of the matches were online, which, coach Sean Foster said, is helpful because it keeps the travel budget to zero.
“We are facing kids from all over the state, so not having to travel allows everyone to be involved,” said Foster, who works for the IT Department for the Bryant School District. “The only obstacle is the internet and making sure the equipment is up to date.”
In January, the Arkansas Activities Association voted to enter a partnership with PlayVs, an online gaming provider out of Los Angeles. PlayVs makes sure games are team-based and appropriate for students. High schools in more than 12 states are affiliated with PlayVs, and more than 80 schools in Arkansas have signed up for eSports.
“Any school is able to join,” junior Baker Bright said. “If you register and are able to play, then you are in.”
Foster said the team played through an eight-week season, and the state tournament was made up of 64 teams in a single-elimination format. He said schools are allowed to have as many teams as they like, but they were put on the same side of the bracket to prevent a finals match featuring the same school.
“The AAA sanctioned the sport in January, and the school jumped on it quickly and really provided whatever we needed,” said Brenda Qualls, the computer science teacher at Bryant High School. She said she helped recruit the members of the team because they were all in her class.
“Awareness is kind of an issue right now, but it is spreading,” Qualls said. “We are having more students talking about it, and we are planning on having three Rocket League teams next year, as well as, hopefully, a room for us to play and practice in.”
Qualls said the championship match was broadcast live and had commentators. She said she has watched the final game two or three times through the team’s twitch channel, which is located at twich.tv/BHS_esports. All of the team’s former matches are available to watch.
Qualls said that because of the competitive nature of the sport and how fast eSports is growing in general, she expects the state tournaments to eventually be held at an arena of some sort.
Rocket League is a 3 vs. 3 soccer match, but instead of people, each person uses a dune-buggy vehicle to score goals. Foster said practices are focused on the teamwork aspect and everyone doing their part.
“The positions are fluid,” he said. “Some teams have a set goalie, but that doesn’t always work out for them, so generally, it is fluid.
“The player in front is attacking the ball, and the one in the back is cleaning up the messes. They rotate out and take turns, because that is the most efficient way to keep up the pressure and keep possession.”
Junior Adam Perry said that while a few of the players knew each other before joining the team, they still spent the first few matches together learning each other’s playing styles. He said that while he and junior Miles Burgess were mostly attack, senior Ivan Munoz-Castaneda was very defensive.
“Forcing us to play in a new position allowed us to get better,” Burgess said.
Barton said being on the team helped him make friends because this was only his second year in the Bryant School District.
Burgess said he has logged about 2,600 hours with the Rocket League and is ranked in the .4 percent of the whole world. He said he was pretty confident when the season started that the Hornets were going to win a state championship.
“When I would play online, I would face people from all across the United States, but I hardly ever met anyone from Arkansas,” Burgess said. “So I didn’t think it would be as difficult as some others might think, because even the people I had met from Arkansas were either past high school or weren’t in high school yet.”
Foster said he was at about 800 hours before he started coaching the team, but now he is at about 1,100 hours.
“My strong suit was positional awareness, which was convenient for us, because that is where we needed the most work,” Foster said. “I’m watching professional tournaments and reviewing all of their replays and seeing what works for them.”
The Hornets finished the season 14-0, only dropping one game in the regular season matches and just two in the playoffs. Burgess said their biggest competitors for the future are Van Buren and Hot Springs Lakeside.
The team also competed for the League of Legends state championship but finished in the top eight for it.
“I’m basically supervising for that, instead of coaching,” Foster said. “Either we need to brush up on our League of Legends
knowledge or find someone at the school who has.”
Foster also said he expects Bryant to have three Rocket League teams next year.
“This year was kind of a pilot program. People were invited to come and participate,” Foster said.
“It would have been hard to have tryouts in less than two weeks,” Qualls added.
Foster said he will have participants play each other, either one on one or three on three, and he will analyze each person individually. He said they would probably take on 12 players, including three substitutes.
“Hopefully, we will get those substitutes a little more involved,” Foster said. “They will help run the stream or work our social media and video editing.”
“We are super competitive, and we all take it too seriously,” Burgess said.
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.