Esports club competes in Play VS

Esports is playing competitively on Play VS. They will compete Tuesdays through Thursdays starting Sept.19 through the Play VS platform, which hosts the competitive play of different video games.
The club is competing in many different events. Chess is competing on Tuesdays. The Smash Brothers group competes on Wednesdays. Rocket League and Fortnite compete on Thursdays, and Pokemon Unite competes on Fridays.
“.[I]f one kid wants to do one sport then they can do another sport on the other day. Like I have one kid that signed up for playing three different games…he’s playing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so he’s fine,” esports coach William Woods said.
Preparation is different for each event. Some of the gamer groups practice with each other, while others need to make sure they have the correct software. As they learn how the games work, the gamers may need to prepare differently. They will learn how they prepare throughout the season, since this is the gamers’ first competitive season.
“I’m not entirely sure [how to prepare them for the competitions] just yet, simply because of the fact that this is our first year competing,” Woods said.
Esports is competing in a specific time zone for the area of the country that includes teams they will compete against online through the Play VS platform. They play with different schools from Maine all the way down to Florida.
“They do have multiple locations around the country…it’s the same time frame as everyone else,” Woods said.
The Esports Club was going to compete last year, but due to Hurricane Helene, they were unable to.
“We tried signing up with them last year, but last year, their cutoff day for it was when we had Hurricane Helene. And so by the time we all came back to school, they were two weeks in. They said, ‘You can compete, but you have to give up all your off weeks.’ And I’m like, I can’t do that to the kids, because we just, we weren’t ready, because they just kind of jumped out at the last second,” Woods said.