Here at North High School we are fortunate enough to be one of the few schools to have an eSports club. In this club many students with the same interest, competitive gaming, come together to form a team. These students compete against many different schools and areas with the chance to earn scholarships, titles, money and, of course, bragging rights.

AJ Trusler, senior and eGamer, explains about what kind of things go on in eSports is a competitive video gaming team.

“Most people instantly think fat kids in their mom’s basement playing games; that’s not what it is,” Trusler said. “It’s more… it’s more like a sport. You have to be physically fit and mentally fit.”

The whole idea behind this club is to get kids who are interested in competing to form a team and compete against other schools. Only a handful of schools are doing this and ‘we wanna be a part of it,’ Trusler said.

   Trusler hopes to see some high school girls in this club, too.

“I want to prove that stereotype wrong,” he said. Trusler explained that it’s not just guys who play eSports; there are girls, as well, and they’re really good. There are a lot of games you can compete in but our club hasn’t decided what games they are wanting to play, just yet, because they need to join a league first. Some examples of games you can compete in are ‘Super Smash Brothers’, ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Counter Strike’, ‘Overwatch’ and ‘Rocket League.”

   Trusler reflected on his early fascination with video games.

“I was about five-years-old playing on the original Xbox playing ‘Halo’, and one of my uncles said, ‘Hey, they’re starting to do tournaments for this.’ So, I started researching and I found what they called ‘eSports’ about a couple of years ago. And, so I started recently getting back into competitive game playing.”

Sure, all these games are fun, but usually everyone is only good at one game. In Trusler’s case, he’s a threat in ‘For Honor’ and ‘Call of Duty’ and more.

“I got a whole list that I can keep rambling on,” he said.

   The club’s immediate agenda is to establish a routine, decide upon a league to join and practice. Things will get fun next semester when they will actually start competing in game tournaments.

   Does Trusler think eSports should be recognized as an actual sport?

“I do. Michael Phelps actually recognizes it as a sport. There’s a couple other big support people that recognize it as a sport. If you’re physically training for it, you’re mentally training for it and you practice it, I consider it a sport,” he said.

In every game there is an objective. Some of the games this club plays, like ‘Counter Strike’, the goal is to either diffuse the bomb or kill the enemy team. In ‘Call of Duty’ it’s racking up points by killing the enemy team. There are many other games with many other objectives.

Not every gamer gets to become world famous and win millions of dollars but who knows maybe we have our own Sumail walking among us.