Lincoln’s High School’s eSports program, one of the newest and least known in the school, is already a championship-caliber program. They burst onto the scene in 2020, and won a state championship playing their favorite video games that same year. They’ve been facing lots of adversity in the four years since, and the program is part of the ongoing rise of eSports as a whole.
“Every year, the expectation is to be a strong team that competes against other schools with the goal of winning,” said coach Brandon Lahoud. “The state is also rejoining PlayVS [an esports competition platform] as our competition interface, and we want to make it to the playoffs this year at the minimum. Last year, we were 1 point away from making the cut, so hopefully this year we can do it!”
Esports is not like other sports– it’s playing video games competitively as a team. Competitive scenes for a myriad of different video games have developed over the years, and eSports is the competition of the best of the best players. It’s a separate entity from casual gaming, as constant innovation is required to keep up with each game’s “meta,” or most effective and modern strategies. As the game continues to grow globally, students aren’t playing on their couch, and elevate their play for high school teams.
LHS’s team plays Mario Kart 8, a classic race game with Nintendo characters; Splatoon 2, a colorful team based shooter; Super Smash Bros Ultimate, a classic that involves Nintendo characters fighting each other; along with two more team-based shooters in Valorant and Overwatch 2, and lastly Rocket League, a game where cars play soccer. Rocket League functions as a 3v3, best of 5 series of matches with strategies similar to real soccer. Games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate operate more like tennis – 1v1, best of 5 matches, with a best of 3 games in each match. Each game is unique in this way, and collectively contributes to the overall team performance.
Esports has been growing, but they still faced difficulties in even securing a team during their first season. It took a teenager in the major eSports scene, Bugha, to win a Fortnite tournament in order to secure a season. “I remember the first year with our former Principal in fall 2019, he rejected it, so we couldn’t compete in the Fall. Our athletic director was intrigued because Hendricken and Barrington were some of the first schools that fall [to play eSports]” said Lahoud. That year, being the only team to compete over the pandemic, they won a state championship.
Over the past few years, Mr Lahoud has worked hard to supply all these different games for the team, building up a repertoire of games to play. Along with a generous 10 LG 4k monitors donated to the school, their equipment has been built from the ground up.
“The winning schools from the past 2 years have had new equipment for PCs, so it is very different for us here at LHS trying to compete. We often talk to other teams and coaches saying we’re as strong as we are with a stock Honda Civic, while some schools are running Indy F1 racing cars – it’s incredible what we’ve been able to accomplish with little to no equipment!” said Lahoud.
These equipment setbacks haven’t held the team back, as things are trending upwards for the team this year. Led by captain and junior Zaiden LeGrand, with most of the team returning this year, the eSports squad is looking forward to success.
“Being the captain gives me the opportunity to help people improve on their skills and be a good representative of our school… It brings a lot of responsibility and pressure that I love to take on every week,” said LeGrand.
“In the future, we hope to get some support with grants to get us jerseys/uniforms, updated PCs, and more!” said Lahoud, and with a playoff spot on the line, don’t be surprised when Lincoln eSports becomes one of the most fun young programs at the school.
