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Arcadia High’s League of Legends esports team wins second place at CIF tournament
Arcadia Weekly Mar 10, 2022
Arcadia High Esports Team (from left to right): Kevin Wu, Jeff Li, Benson Qian, Edwin Lin, and Phillip Leslie. | Courtesy photo
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Arcadia High’s esports team finished with a second-place finish in this year’s California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) tournament. Even before their success at the event, though, the esports team was one of the most popular opportunities available on the campus.
“They had over 600 students interested, and anything that engages over 20% of our student population is something I want to really look into supporting,” said Arcadia High Principal Angie Dillman. Dillman is referring to student interest for Arcadia High School’s League of Legends Esports team. Despite it being the team’s first year competing, Arcadia High’s Esports team recently won second place in the Fall Season of the League of Legends California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Esports Initiative Championships in December 2021.
“I worked with our athletic director, Ms. [Milica] Protic, to really do whatever it would take to get this started because I knew students needed something to engage them with each other during the lockdown,” said Dillman. With students restricted to online classes, esports was a way to connect with one another without violating COVID-19 regulations. Dillman believes that this esports program will help bring people together within Arcadia High and connect students all around the world.
“The [Arcadia High Esports] program actually started in its entirety last year during COVID-19 because everyone was online and was looking for different ways to play their favorite games with their friends,” said Kevin Wu, who plays the Support role on Arcadia High’s League of Legends Esports team. Wu also noted that since its inception, Arcadia High’s Esports team has tried to become more competitive against other schools’ teams by operating a slim team of five players.
For those unfamiliar with how the online game League of Legends is played, two teams, each composed of five members, compete against each other in the “Summoner’s Rift,” the name of the playing area. The goal for each team is to destroy the enemy’s Nexus at the heart of their base. There are three “lanes” that bridge the two opposing teams’ bases. In between the lanes is the jungle, which is replete with various monsters. Each of the five players on the team has a distinct role: the Top Laner, Middle Laner, Jungler, Bottom Laner, and Support.
As the names of the roles suggest, each person takes on a specific part of the game map, with the bottom lane occupied by both the Bottom Laner and the Support. While Laners and Supports largely work on advancing upon the enemy’s base through lanes, the Jungler contributes by killing monsters within the jungle, giving the team more advantages with each monster killed.
“I [became] Jungler because I like killing monsters,” said Edwin Lin, an Arcadia High sophomore on the school’s Esports team. To decide on the roles for this Esports team, the members took note of experience and personal inclinations. Just like Lin, esports player Phillip Leslie also became the Top Laner of the team because he found both the role and playing style interesting; however, the team members also had to make compromises.
“I’m normally a Middle Lane player, but I took the role of the Bottom Lane because there was already a Middle Lane player on the team,” commented Jeff Li, Arcadia High junior and Esports team member.
When the team started out during distance learning, they were able to practice and play together frequently. However, with the return of school came other in-person extracurricular activities, making practicing together much more difficult.
“We had to really plan out our practices, actually, due to scheduling conflicts,” noted Li.
Still, the Esports team managed to practice together for one to two hours a week during the fall season.
“I’m interested to see where it goes with CIF because it’s not exactly a CIF sport right now [; …] it definitely could move toward being an officially sanctioned CIF sport in the future,” remarked Dillman.
Esports is a recent addition to CIF’s large plethora of sports. Currently, esports are considered to be a CIF Initiative, meaning that it is not an officially sanctioned CIF sport, rather the sport is in a pilot stage. The pilot program allows different high schools to play one another through a structured experience. CIF has partnered with PlayVS, a company working to make a platform for amateur esports players, to facilitate these competitions. Every school year has two seasons, each of which has around 10 games, spanning three to four months. This culminates into a single-elimination style finals bracket, where the last team standing wins first place.
“We thought that competitions were pretty exciting even though we couldn’t really see the other team,” said Wu. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, esports competitions were held exclusively online. Even so, the team was able to communicate with opposing teams through in-game chats.
Being a newly formed team coupled with the virtual nature of the competitions presented a fair amount of challenges, particularly communication. “The play style is so different between playing solo and playing with a team,” shared Leslie. “You have to manage a lot more than what you think you would.”
Wu agreed, expressing that “you’re not playing as an individual anymore, you have to take into account what everyone else is doing and saying at a particular moment in time and it’s a whole different experience.”
“The highlight [of the season] was really the playoffs, where we faced harder and harder opponents,” said Wu.
Despite its various obstacles, the Arcadia High Esports team embraced the challenges that came its way, making it all the way to the final round of the League of Legends CIF Initiative competition. In the final round, Arcadia High faced La Quinta High School in a best-of-five series of games. While Arcadia High’s Esports team faltered in the first two games, it found its footing in the third game of the round, winning against La Quinta. Unfortunately, Arcadia went on to lose the fourth and last game by a slim margin.
“There’s certainly a lot of pressure related to being the first […] and that certainly makes not getting first a little more disappointing,” reflected Wu, continuing on to say, “getting second place is always bittersweet. We’re proud of what we accomplished in our first year of competing, but we hope that we can take first place soon.”
As for hopes on the upcoming Spring 2022 season, Arcadia High’s Esports players are looking to expand the program through greater fundraising and continued administrative support. And though the Arcadia High Esports team may have conquered many enemy bases last season, its trials are far from over.
“One of our big goals for the next year is to become officially part of, and have the full support of, the broader [Arcadia High] athletics department,” said Wu.
Esports is unique in that it has no real physical costs. Unlike traditional sports, there is not really any equipment or transportation costs–everything is on the internet. Regardless, securing funding for tournament entries and other associated costs to run the team is necessary. For the current season, Arcadia High’s Esports team is moving forward knowing that they have preliminary, monetary support from Arcadia High’s Athletics Department.
“There’s only one place to go, right? And that’s up” reflected Wu.
