With stigma fading and scholarships available, video games take off at Clark County schools as extracurricular activity

Prairie High School students went head-to-head — more like screen-to-screen — against Camas High School during an esports match after school on Wednesday, March 19.

Esports (electronic sports) made its way to Clark County high schools in the 2022-23 school year and has slowly expanded ever since. Prairie had only five students interested and one team when the school started esports. Now, 15 students are split between the school’s two varsity teams and one junior varsity team.

“I think there’s still a little bit of a stigma around playing esports, that it’s not a real sport, or people are afraid they’re going to get made fun of for playing video games,” said Simeon Redberg, Prairie science teacher and esports adviser. “But it’s a multibillion-dollar industry. Colleges are offering scholarships for it.”

Cody Sigler, 17, a Prairie senior and a varsity team captain, received esports scholarship offers from multiple colleges, including $4,000 from Winthrop University in South Carolina, which he decided to attend in the fall.

“I played video games a lot growing up, but I never considered that it would help me get into college. I didn’t think there was ever going to be esports at school either,” Sigler said. “There’s always the conversation around it (being) too violent and this or that. But I think the fact that people are finally recognizing it as a sport and something that you actually have to work together as a team to compete in is great.”

Matches are filmed

Even though esports isn’t a traditional sport, it shares many aspects. Redberg said a lot of teams stream their matches on Twitch and YouTube. Prairie students watch film of their matches and those of their opponents to learn how to improve. Also, schools compete against others in their division, and the top teams compete in playoffs to get to the state championship.

Prairie’s team practices and competes in the school’s library. This season, one varsity team plays Valorant, and the other two teams play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, an old-school, one-on-one fighter game.

Super Smash Bros. holds a special place in Emmi Castagnaro’s heart. She said her uncles played the older versions of the game when she was growing up. They let her play, and now she does it competitively.

“I can just be myself and play with people that love to play games, even if it’s competitively or just for fun,” said Castagnaro, a 17-year-old senior. “And it’s definitely a way for me to relax from school.”

As one of the few girls participating in esports at Prairie, Castagnaro said that although she wishes there were more girl players, the guys welcomed her and everyone is treated equally.

For Wednesday’s match, Sigler and four others on the Valorant team each sat in a row facing a computer. They grabbed their headsets, chose their characters and started the first round against Camas.

Valorant is a fantasy first-person shooter game in which each character has a special ability. At the start of the game, a coin toss decides which team starts as the attackers and which team as the defenders. The goal for attackers is to plant a spike and protect it for a certain time, and defenders try to prevent that.

Prairie’s team started off strong, but Camas quickly caught up. Most rounds, the teams were neck and neck until Prairie started to lag. Even with the team’s huge comeback, Camas took the win.

The teams are gearing up for this season’s playoffs and state championship in May at the Lynnwood Event Center. Last season, Sigler’s team took home the top state prize.

“They work so well together. Communication is just always on point. They’re locked in, as the kids would say,” Redberg said. “I just sit here and watch them and just smile the whole time.”

Brianna Murschel: 360-735-4534; [email protected]