Lakehead Public Schools launches esports league

Thunder Bay's public school board is giving high school students a taste of competitive gaming through its new esports league.

The LPS eSports League was officially announced on Wednesday.

Currently, it operates out of Westgate CVI, Superior CVI, and Hammarskjold High School, where students can join esports clubs that meet twice a week. But Sherri-Lynne Pharand, the board's director of education, said the hope is to grow the league to encompass competition between schools both in and outside of Thunder Bay.

"With any team, you learn a lot of teamwork skills, how to cooperate, how to work together with one another towards a goal," she said. "But embedded in esports, there's also a lot of the curriculum."

"There's foundations in science and technology, coding, computer science," Pharand said. "We hope that the students, first of all feel, engaged to come to school, that they feel part of a team and a club and feel part of the school community, that they see a potential future pathway."

The league currently offers the games Rocket League, Roblox, and Minecraft. However, that list is expected to grow as well, said Kel Cullis, chair of technologies education at Superior CVI.

"It'll be dictated by what the kids want to do," he said. "What they're interested in, the kind of games they want to play. And then when they have those that they bring forward, then we talk to our board about it and get things okayed and go from there."

The league was sponsored by Tbaytel, which provided $30,000 to help purchase gaming PCs and monitors.

"Tbaytel and Lakehead Public Schools, they've been long-time strategic partners, and for decades we've actually been working together to make sure that we're delivering the infrastructure and the broadband technology to power the schools," said Amy Meunier, Tbaytel director of marketing and communication. "We always look for new opportunities in which there's synergies, and so esports was kind of a natural fit because that rides on the back of broadband."

"We're going to see how it goes, and see how the uptake and the adoption is from the students, and then we're going to revisit it with the schools and see if there's new opportunities for us to continue to improve and grow."

Superior Grade 10 student Connor Singleton said the league has been a lot of fun so far.

"Everyone's a good sport," he said. "They play well."

"Some people better than others, but it's been really fun."