Atascocita High School Esports Team Wins National ChampionshipFrom Humble ISD:
Pictured from left to right: School Board President Martina Lemond Dixon; AHS Teacher and ESports Sponsor Ann Wehrman; AHS students Matthew Maito and Huy Nguyen; and Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Fagen. (Not pictured: AHS students Cameron Fox, Fabian Flores and Gavin Shafer) By Joshua Koch | June 14, 2023 What is ESports? It is the world of competitive, organized video gaming that is expected to be a $6.4 billion industry by 2030. Humble ISD is at the forefront of preparing students, offering ESports as a Career and Technology course since 2021. Atascocita High School is the home to a National Championship-winning team in ESports. An AHS ESports team – composed of students Cameron Fox, Fabian Flores, Matthew Maito, Huy Nguyen and Gavin Shafer – on May 14 defeated Hollins High out of Florida, 3-0, to win the High School Esports League Nationals Grand Final. Along with the title of National Champions, each of the five players on the team received $1,500 in scholarship money, which can go directly toward a college or trade school. The scholarships for the National Champion Team members were provided by the Videogames and ESports Foundation (VEF). The team was honored for their accomplishment at the June 13, 2023, Humble ISD School Board Meeting. The High School Esports League was founded in 2012 and is the largest and longest-running competitive gaming organization for high school students. To qualify for the national contest, the team first had to finish in the Top 4 of a Fall or Spring major. Between the two competitions, Atascocita Esports sponsor Ann Wehrman, who teaches the career and technical class of animation, said there were more than 80 teams involved with only eight spots for Nationals up for grabs. AHS competed against teams from across the United States and one from Toronto. “The competition was the culmination of the fall and spring major seasons,” Wehrman said. “The major seasons take place for 10 weeks with games being once per week. This year our team played every Thursday evening, with multiple practice sessions throughout the week. At the end of each major season, there are playoffs that last for two weeks to determine the top teams.” AHS ESports program in 2023 had multiple teams, each specializing in a game. The games are Rocket League, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, League of Legends, Halo, Overwatch and Super Smash Brothers. The team that won the National Championship played Rainbow Six Siege. Rainbow Six Siege is described as a high-precision, tactical shooter game that prioritizes careful planning teamwork and finely tuned tactical play. Rainbow Six Siege is played on different maps and to win a game, a team must be the first to win seven rounds. To win a match, a team needs to win two out of three games. In the grand final, it was a best of five set up instead of best of three. At HSEL Nationals, which was May 11-14, AHS did not lose a single game. What makes the AHS Rainbow Sx Siege team special is that they have varying levels of experience in Esports, Wehrman said. Fox, whose gamer name is Shrimp, has been a part of the Esports program at AHS all four years and is committed to continue playing at the University of Texas at Dallas. Maito, whose gamer name is Flixzzer, has been a part of the program for two years and has an offer to also play at UT-Dallas but is deciding whether to play in college or turn pro. Both Fox and Maito are involved in the amateur R6 scene, while Maito also competes on a Mexican Challengers League team. Nguyen, whose gamer name is Obskiel, has been in the group for two years but just joined the R6 Siege team and is also committed to play at UT-Dallas. Flores, whose gamer name is BadKarmq, is also new to theAHS team and is a junior, while Shafer, known as Natgav, will be retiring from Esports and pursue a career as a pilot at Lone Star College. “The players on our team learned to compete at a young age through participation in traditional sports such as basketball, tennis, and soccer,” Wehrman said. “Maito was on the track team at AHS for three years and played competitive soccer from sixth grade through ninth grade. Shafer played baseball and Nguyen was on the AHS tennis team during 10th and 11th grade as well as being in the AHS Orchestra.” Since the victory, Wehrman has been getting requests from college coaches to speak to her team about scholarship opportunities at the next level. In the 2022-2023 school year, the AHS ESports program had 275 students involved. AHS teachers Michael Yuchs, Christian Box, Brandon Nguyen, Scott Ford and Michael Saxton all jumped in to coach different teams. The program also hosted a State Qualifying tournament for Super Smash Brother Ultimate at the Main Event with teams from all over Texas in attendance; competed in a Winter Open tournament in Grapevine, Texas; had an all-girls team named Valkyries, which earned national recognition and scholarship offers and Atascocita Middle School launched an ESports program with a tournament. ESports began in Humble ISD as a club at the campus level – first at Atascocita High School in September of 2018 with sophomores and juniors. In the first year, AHS had two Overwatch teams (15 students) and one League of Legends team (7 students). The number of ESports clubs also grew across the district in 2019 as Humble, Kingwood Park, Summer Creek and Quest Early College High School (now Sconzo Early College High School) came online. In the 2020-2021 school year, Kingwood High School added its club. In the Fall of 2021, Humble ISD added ESports as a CTE course, offering ESports I at Atascocita, Humble, Kingwood, Kingwood Park and Summer Creek High Schools. This course is designed to prepare students for college studies and professional careers centered around the ESports industry. Students learn the basics of content creation, ESports analytics, tournament organization, technology needs and more. This course has been offered for the past two school years. In Fall of 2023, two new courses will be added – ESports II and Practicum in Entrepreneurship: ESports.