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image credit: D. Tomeldan |
Last Friday (December 11, 2015) EIPS hosted it's first official
eSports tournament at
Salisbury Composite High School. There was a total of about 120 junior high and high school students in two parallel competitions,
League of Legends 5v5 (team) and
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Project M 1v1 (individual). Competitors represented
Ardrossan Junior Senior High,
Bev Facey Community High School,
Clover Bar Junior High,
F. R. Haythorne Junior High School,
Fultonvale School,
Salisbury Composite High School,
Strathcona Christian Academy Secondary School, and
Vegreville Composite High.
While competitors were charged $10 each to cover the cost of prizes and a donation to the
Stollery Children's Hospital Foundation at the behest of
Nitza's Pizza.
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the prize table |
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Microsoft provided Xbox One consoles for casual gaming. |
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Winners of the Project M competition (left to right): King (SAL) in first, Crow (SAL) in second, and HDPizzas (AJS) in third. |
Unfortunately due to time constraints the
LoL tournament bracket wasn't completed, but the judges consulted the statistics and decided to award the prizes to Team GHZ from SCS.
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Team GHZ |
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setting up early in the morning |
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students checking in and reporting game outcomes |
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Project M competition screens |
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Project M on the south side |
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League on the north side |
The day was live streamed via
YouTube for wide angle and Project M, and
Twitch for LoL. Unfortunately many comments on both streams were somewhat toxic, so commenting was disabled on YouTube and moderated by EIPS staff on Twitch. You can also view a
flyover video of the experience.
Participants were expected to abide by a
code of conduct, and we didn't have any behavior issues from competitors or spectators.
As organizers we had expected that parents and staff would be questioning the value of a video game tournament during a school. We were prepared to talk about how students are often pulled out of classes for traditional sports tournaments, that many of the benefits of sports are also evident in esports, and that these students are often under-served by traditional extracurricular activities. However we were surprised at how positive and encouraging everyone has been about this event.
We've been encouraged to start planning the next event. Hopefully there will be another grades 7 to 12 tournament in the spring, as well as an elementary tournament at some point soon. Games being considered are
Rocket League,
Mario Kart,
Halo 5, and
Hearthstone. Obviously the latter two are rated "Teen" and won't be used for elementary tournaments.