By Sentinel News Service

The Compton Unified School District (CUSD), in partnership with the Carrot Group and the Los Angeles Chargers, will host its first-ever eSports High School Tournament between its four high schools – Centennial, Compton, Compton Early College, and Dominguez High Schools – to kick off a districtwide career program and strengthen Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) skills in schools.

The CUSD eSports program aims to develop students’ STEAM skills while reinforcing skills such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving. The eSports program also seeks to educate students about computer programming and the various career opportunities within the video game industry, while encouraging gameplay sportsmanship.

Registration is free and open until October 4, with tournament play set to begin October 14. Teams can register at https://highschool.gg/comptonunified/. There will be an orientation and kickoff at Compton High School on October 8, from 1:30pm – 3:30pm.

As part of the Chargers partnership, the club will provide a $20,000 donation to supply team gear and support transportation for teams to practice, tournaments and career days. The donation continues the Chargers investment in STEM programming for students from under-resourced communities. In addition to supporting the facility renovations at Boys & Girls Clubs of Watts/Willowbrook and Challengers earlier this year, the Chargers provided critical funding to launch STEM programming at all Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Los Angeles clubhouses. Additionally, the Chargers partnered with Ducommun and UCI Samueli School of Engineering to develop STEM on the Sidelines, a hands-on robotics and engineering competition for kids from Orange and Los Angeles Counties.

Each student team will have six players and one alternate. Once a week for six weeks after school, teams will play an approximately 60-minute match online using the wildly popular video game Overwatch. Students will also attend a two-hour facilitated off-campus Orientation and Career Pathway session from leading educational partners that will include insights on careers in video game industry and access to a free online, college level course in game design.

Several Chargers players will also serve as honorary team captains at the tournaments, including wide receiver Geremy Davis, defensive tackle Justin Jones, defensive end Isaac Rochell and quarterback Tyrod Taylor.

Managed by HighSchool.gg, the tournament, which is provided at no charge to students, will culminate in a play-off round with the best team from each school competing the two winners will be facing off in a 2-hour live Championship event on Tuesday, December 10, 2019.  Prizes include tickets for the winning team to attend a Chargers home game, a gamine accessories package from SteelSeries a VIP trip to meet with leading video game production designers, a CUSD eSports Championship ring, and a scholarship to attend a game design bootcamp.  More information about the tournament can be found at:  http://www.compton.k12.ca.us/esports

This article originally appeared in The Los Angeles Sentinel.

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