A few years ago Jean O’Donnell was approached by Discovery High School principal Carissa Frazier about the possibility of the school participating in Esports.
Frazier took notice of college Esports and its positive ramifications and knew that O’Donnell, who was an avid multiplayer online gamer herself along with being a forensic science and college success teacher for 15 years, could do the legwork for the school. O’Donnell, and her son Chris Phillippe, also a dedicated a Final Fantasy gamer who teaches physical science, researched the Esports world and found a High School Esports League would be the best avenue for Discovery.
So, at the start of the school year in 2020, O’Donnell and her son organized an interest meeting for Esports, and 80-plus students showed up. Many students, however, lost interest when they heard how much it would cost to join the team.
“We are a Title I school, so a lot of the kids couldn’t afford it,” O’Donnell said. “We told the kids that if they really wanted to play, we would find a way to pay for them. But the kids really weren’t committed to it, didn’t want to fund-raise and stuff like that. Those kids dropped out.”
Following the development of Discovery being one of the first Polk County programs to organize Esports under the athletic department, the school raised approximately $50 to $100 per video game seat for each student per game thanks to developing gaming shirts, whipping up cookies and selling butter-braided bread, among other fundraisers.
Additionally, one of the student-athlete’s parents owned a McDonalds, which helped with sponsoring the team last year, although that student and parent are no longer affiliated with the team this year.
With finances somewhat taken care of, the game system of choice was the Nintendo Switch. The games of choice were Super Smash Bros., Call of Duty and Rainbow 6.
In joining the High School Esports League — a league that comprises divisions from the northeast to the southeast — Discovery students play at the school, while some stay home, competing online.
And all of this was possible thanks to Discovery High School’s network manager Kim Gillman, who was able to disable a firewall that prevented competition — a problem that some schools in Florida are dealing with.
“There’s been a lot of hiccups in getting this started, but we learned a lot,” O’Donnell said. “We learned that you have to watch out for firewalls. You have to make sure you have the right bandwidth. You have to make sure each one of the devices is on the network and working.”
When competing versus other teams, Discover utilizes an application called Discord, which is a service gamers can talk over voice, video and text. Players are in constant communication with each other.
Last season, from September to December of 2021, Discovery’s Super Smash Bros. team placed sixth and went to the playoffs. The Valorant team also made the playoffs as well.
“Last year it was a little humbling,» Discover Esports team captain Louiyi Serrano said. «It was a little hard to get used to, but we got a hold of it and now, we understand what we should be doing. “Individually, we ranked pretty high.”
This year the season started in January and ended in April and the school played in the PlayVS, an amateur Esports league.
The program competed in Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Overwatch, Valorant and Rocket League. In Super Smash Bros., the team was 18th, 32nd and 35th among 800 teams. The Overwatch team was 35th; while Mario Kart participants were 38th.
Next year, in its fifth season, the program plans to play two seasons during the school year and could play in PlayVs, the High School Sports League or Electronic Game Federation.
Three weeks ago, the Electronic Gaming Federation gave Discovery the opportunity to compete in the National High School Esports Championship at the Wide World of Sports in Disney on June 17-19.
“I think the Esports builds confidence in a lot of these kids,” O’Donnell said. “We have one kid (who’s) living in a hotel right now. And so he doesn’t have access to everything that everybody else gets to do. So being on the Esports team, he’s part of something. And he’s got people to talk to, and he can socialize.
«He doesn’t have the WiFi at his hotel, so he can stay after school with us and he can game and he can game with people his own age. And it’s also teaching the kids a higher order of thinking because they have to come up with a plan, execute the plan and make sure it’s working. It’s not just getting on there and mashing buttons.”
