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Esports catching on at West Catholic

Posted at 11:35 PM, May 23, 2018
and last updated 2018-05-24 08:38:15-04

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich -- The world of competitive gaming is taking off and West Catholic High School is getting on board.

The Falcons started an esports team back in January.

"It's been awesome," coach Adam Antor said. "We've talked with multiple college recruiters. We've visited a couple colleges that offer scholarships for competitive gaming, and our Rocket League team is actually one of the best in the nation and competes every season at a really high level."

The team competes in Rocket League and Counter-Strike and will add Fortnight this summer.

Rocket League is their best game and they play in teams of three where communication is vital.

"'I'm the captain of the Rocket League team, so I kind of have to keep cool and collected," junior Corey Grant said. "Things can go wrong and you have to keep your team calm to not make them play worse or make them make easy mistakes for the opponents to score on definitely emphasizing on them some sort of structure to keep it collected."

The rewards reaped form esports go beyond teamwork and success.

"I think the greatest thing to come out of this is the increase in performance in the classroom," Antor added. "We have seen a decrease in absences. We`ve seen an increase in academic performance and then we have seen a lot of students who might have been on the outskirts of a lot of the school community now have a place to call home, if you will."

Antor says only a few area schools currently have esports but that several more have expressed interest.