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HUNTINGDON -- Esports, or competitive video gaming, is the fastest-growing sport at high schools all over the country.
None of the schools in the Juniata Valley have decided to field teams yet. The Juniata County School District has come the closest but its school board voted against the proposal not once but twice recently.
Neighboring school districts in Newport and Selinsgrove have joined the electronic frenzy. Newport's club is fairly new but hit the ground running with a designated club space and teams competing in tournaments.
They're most active at the end of the school day, where you can find Newport team members strategizing for League of Legends, scoring goals in Rocket League and knocking out in Super Smash Brothers: Ultimate.
In a 2022 article by Emerald Esports, Newport Club Manager Jason Sieber said many esports career opportunities go beyond professional players. Options in STEM, production, social media, engineering, marketing and many other fields are available for students to pursue under the gaming umbrella.
Sieber explained, "Being able to provide students with alternative professions that are still related to gaming while allowing them to compete for fun" is something that wasn't possible before the recent rise of esports.
Sieber said in that article that managing the club has been a rewarding experience. He added it gives the students a safe space to comfortably game and find future success post-graduation.
He also found that students playing esports have maintained better grades to meet requirements to compete in tournaments.
Additionally, students who play esports have had the opportunity to come out of their shells and make new friends through shared interests. Sieber said the club has brought "a lot of students from different lifestyles and backgrounds together in one room where they can all get along."
In Pennsylvania alone, the number of high school esports programs has jumped from a few dozen in 2018 to more than 100 in 2021. Nationally, the video game and esports industry continues to be a multi-billion dollar one.
Midd-West High School didn't have an esports team, but that didn't stop Hunter Wolfley from playing esports when he decided to attend Juniata College.
Now a junior, Wolfley now plays running back on the football team and esports at Juniata.
"I heard about esports from a friend who played," Wolfley said. "I think it would be fun to have at the high school level for more of an opportunity for kids to compete."
Wolfley played on the Call of Duty team, which consisted of all football players. "However, it was never just us in there, so yeah there were several interactions with new people who play different games."
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, or PIAA, the governing body for most athletics in the state, has not yet gotten involved in high school esports, leaving the dozens of programs that have sprouted up to fend for themselves when navigating a complicated competition circuit.
Currently, PlayVS and the High School Esports League, or HSEL, are the two main competition platforms, along with the North American Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF). The NASEF also runs the Pennsylvania Scholastic Esports League, or PSEL, which serves nearly 100 teams in the state as well as 47 states and 11 international partners.
PlayVS uses a national competition circuit where teams are broken into geographic regions (Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific).
In the HSEL, teams compete nationally, meaning a Pennsylvania "Overwatch" team would be in the same league with teams from all participating states. Since 2019, the HSEL has grown from 500 teams to 3,400 nationwide including 229 in Pennsylvania.
There's also the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Esports Association, or PIEA, which is hoping to bring some organization and standardization to esports.
PlayVS is a pay-to-play platform, meaning a high school can register a team or club for a fee, and there are corresponding feeds for players. In addition, only certain games are available via specific platforms. Typically, schools have two to three teams, but that all depends on student interest and available equipment.
The first-person shooter "Overwatch," the action-strategy-game "League of Legends" and the soccer and racing game mash-up "Rocket League" are three of the more popular games among high school programs.