North Bay high school eSports team wins provincial championship titles

Northern high school excels at eSports Members from the North Bay high school St. Joseph-Scollard Hall eSports team wins provincial championship titles.

You need fast fingers and quick reflexes to beat the St. Joseph-Scollard Hall eSports team.

With a video game controller in their hands, they’re hard to beat -- and they proved that this past weekend.

The Bears eSports team competed in the eSports provincial championships playing the popular video game, Rocket League.

The 12 gamers clinched two titles, winning in three games in the finals of the Diamond Division. They won in overtime in Game 5 in the Platinum Division, beating teams from schools across Ontario.

"If you’re really good, and you have good teamwork, you’re going to do really well against the other team," said team member Hayden Baron.

The nice thing about video games, the team said, is that students are ranked the more they play.

The high school team is the only secondary school team in northern Ontario that competes in their body: the Ontario Secondary eSports Association.

"I was really excited. In my head I was thinking like 'Oh my gosh we’re going to win,'" Baron said.

This is the second year the team has competed in provincials.

"We are waiting to find out if our teams will make the national tournament, which happens on Nov. 30," said coach Lucas Tignanelli.

"That'll be based on rankings throughout the league, plus how we finished in this provincial tournament."

You can often find the gamers huddled around the screens in the front corner of the library/study area practising during their free time in between and after classes, until 4 p.m. when the library closes.

Tignanelli joked that coaches encourage the team to constantly practise playing at home when homework and assignments are done.

"We send them home and tell them to play as much video games as possible on the weekend," he chuckled.

Tignanelli said eSports teaches players life skills such as teamwork and comradery.

"It’s a group of students that might not have been friends before, but are certainly now," he said.

The team said it would like to see other schools create their own eSports teams one day to grow competition in the north.

"More schools … starting eSports teams will expand us to other games as well, like Fortnite or Valorant and other games like that,” said team member Corin Stranding.