The YLHS eSports club recently announced its 2019-2020 Overwatch team. Open to anyone interested in joining, tryouts were held after school on September 25th and 26th in room 337. The following students made the team: Aaron Siegler, Adriel Bull, Barry Qin, Logan Tiborczszeghy, Marcus Tran, Max Cohen, Jude Thamm, Ryan Sahyoun, and Samuel Jia. Congratulations to these nine students!

The Overwatch team is part of the eSports club, where students meet to play downloaded games on the monitors of Mr. Eliot’s room. Students have the option to play Overwatch, League of Legends, Hearthstone, or Heroes of the Storm; if necessary students can recommend their own appropriate and downloadable games. 

Four years ago, the club was founded by Jasmine Yu and Lisa Pham. Their purpose is to provide an opportunity “for students to get together after school, play eSports, socialize, and have fun,” says Mr. Eliot (Staff). The eSports club retains this initial intention, and has become a welcoming space to anyone interested in gaming.

Unlike the casual players of the club, the Overwatch team is competitive. All players on the team were chosen specifically for their performance in tryouts. They were evaluated on skill, communication, and teamwork abilities in a match. Coach Brenden Alvarez was responsible for player evaluation. With a set team, he will be in charge of analyzing their individual and team performance in matches (also called “scrims”). Coach Alvarez is on the UCI College eSports team, and he is qualified to coach as assigned by the North American Scholastic eSports Federation (NASEF).

Coaches are assigned to train teams for the NASEF Overwatch Tournament, to be held in fall. The YLHS team will be playing high schools in the shared Pacific Time Zone; this would include high schools in Canada, California, Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. Fortunately, YLHS has had prior experience in NASEF tournaments. Last season, the team made playoffs and ranked 8th out of sixty teams. 

With the start of another season, Mr. Eliot expressed a belief in this year’s “positive and skilled” team. It is the hope that the team “represents YLHS well” while the students become “better players” in the process, according to Mr. Eliot (Staff). Still, Mr. Eliot also wishes for them to “have fun,” as “winning is not [his] primary expectation.”