EIPS eSports Tournament 2015

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.

the prize table

Nitza's Pizza provided pizzas for lunch.

Microsoft provided Xbox One consoles for casual gaming.

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.

Team GHZ

setting up early in the morning

students checking in and reporting game outcomes

Project M competition screens

Project M on the south side

League on the north side

some LoL student shoutcasters

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.