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Chris Kirchner, coach of the Esports computer gaming club that started this year, updated the Park Rapids School Board on Monday about what he called the fastest-growing high school activity in the U.S.
“It services a lot of kids that maybe won’t go out for normal athletics,” he said. “It gets kids out from their basements, out from their rooms, gets them on a team, gets them to be leaders.”
Kirchner reported the club has 18 members this year, and they hope to have 30 next year.
“We have a lot of gamers in our district,” he said. “We don’t know it, because a lot of them play games at home, but we’re hoping to bring that into the light.”
He said the club has five teams running different games, each controlled by a captain. They compete with other school clubs in North Dakota and northern Minnesota in the Fargo-based Fenworks league.
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Two of the team captains, Jack Moses and Sheldon Beaulieu, testified to the leadership experience provided by the club.
Kirchner said the club was fortunate to start the year with six new computers, noting that only 10 percent of Esports clubs have their own gaming lab. The club’s lab is located in the STEM room at Century School.
“We purchased a seventh computer with the money we raised,” he said, adding that they’ve raised almost $11,000 since July from local businesses.
One of the donors was ByteSpeed, a Moorhead-based computer company that maintains the school’s computers. Instead of donating money, they donated approximately $1,200 worth of gaming equipment for the team to dispose of at will.
Kirchner asked the school board to let the club hold a raffle, following Minnesota high school raffle laws. He proposed selling 125 tickets to people aged 18 or older at school sporting events and holding a drawing to give away the donated equipment.
This equipment includes two sets of stereo headphones, two gaming mice, two virtual reality kits and four Steam gift cards donated by the PTA. After the drawing, Kirchner said, the proceeds would be used to buy an additional gaming computer for the lab.
One of the club’s challenges, he said, is only having enough computers in their gaming lab for one team to compete at a time. “So, we have kind of a bottleneck. We have kids that sit idle, wait for their turn. … if we had more computers, it would make more kids eligible to practice and participate.”
Board chair Sherry Safratowich reminded Kirchner to make sure the raffle tickets are numbered.
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Board member Dana Kocka told Kirchner and the boys that he was impressed by the amount of work they have done at sports concession stands this year. “You’ve worked hard to get where you’re at,” he said.
School board members also urged Kirchner to seek grants from the 3M Foundation and the Wolf Lake Wolf Pack baseball club. Kirchner said the Wolf Pack has also donated to the Esports program, but that 3M will need more convincing that Esports is in their wheelhouse.
A resolution approving the raffle fundraiser was approved on the school board’s consent agenda.
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