Story by Sammy Ferris
Video by Jacob Karabatsos
Audio by Aurora Charlow
Photos by Carmen Chamblee
Through his headset, Coach Kerby Olive is guiding his team of middle schoolers on the field in the Rocket League Arena.
“You have time. So much time.”
“There you go. Good touch. Keep going upfield if you can.”
“Good try. That was a weird bounce. It’s OK.”
Listening to Olive’s weekly coaching session, the shouts mimic any other traditional sports practice. Except this game is all on a screen and the team’s players are dispersed on sofas and gaming chairs around the Triangle area, madly controlling their moves on their video consoles. Welcome to the Triangle eSports Rocket League: the newest sports platform at the YMCA.
In October 2020 — the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — the Triangle YMCA introduced eSports as its newest athletic program for young adults. Today, around nine kids here and others nationwide are challenging each other and leveling up their skills at Rocket League, a popular video game.
And it isn’t all about improving high scores or mastering new moves. More importantly, say parents and coaches, the players are learning the essential skills of traditional team sports: how to work with teammates, how to win and how to lose, and the importance of sportsmanship on and off the screen.
“The same benefits that a young person is getting from playing baseball, they will find in a different way — in a way that they’re interested, in a way that they’re passionate about — in eSports,” says Kate Gross, the Y’s Senior Director of Association Team Programs.
For 8th grader Simon Miller — a three-sport athlete at his middle school — his Rocket League career offers him a unique experience to connect with others his age. He first started playing Rocket League in December 2020 when his parents got him a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. Since then, he has racked up over 700 hours playing the game.
Simon Miller shows his car, Octane, in Rocket League.
The most important part of the league, he says: the new friendships.
“Mostly, when I say to other people that Rocket League is my favorite game, they all say that they like some sort of shooter game or something. So I got to meet other people who also really like Rocket League,” Miller says.
Miller has team practice every Monday and plays matches every Wednesday with his team. Every night, he hops on his Switch to get reps in. The time he puts in has paid off.
“My teammates are about my level, which is a little bit higher than the average player,” says Simon.
His father jumps in almost immediately:
“The average for like adults. The average for the whole population,” Dave Miller says.
Simon Miller shrugs his shoulders like any other middle schooler whose parents are trying to brag on them, but he knows it is true: playing eSports means Miller can find out where he ranks compared to other players in the world — of all ages. It also means he can easily find people to play with at his skill level.
His father has seen how this dedication makes video gaming an important part of his son’s life.
“If he is not even playing a match, just like you would practice your dribble or a certain move in the yard, you can go into some sort of open Rocket League stadium, and he just keeps practicing some particular jumping in the air move, flipping and hitting the ball, boosting,” Dave Miller says.
According to coaches like Kerby Olive and Matt Autrey at the Triangle YMCA, the on-screen field might be different but so are the kids who play eSports. Some might be too shy to join a team or feel like they aren’t interested in the more physical sports. This league and others like it give them an opportunity to go from gaming solo to suiting up and joining a team.
Kerby Olive is a Rocket League coach at the YMCA. He along with other coaches teach curriculum based on Rocket League techniques and online safety.
“This is a space for players and kids who may not be comfortable in other places. This is where they can excel. I like letting them express themselves, and it’s good to see people, naturally, who are pretty shy start to come out of their shell and really enjoy their time with one another,” Olive says.
Gross echoes what Olive has seen. She says 75 percent of the kids in the Triangle eSports League have never joined a Y sports team before. This tells her and her staff that they are reaching kids they weren’t able to before.
“We’re now opening the door even wider to serve communities we hadn’t been able to before the pandemic,” she says.
Both Gross and Olive also highlight how there are serious mental and physical aspects of eSports. There are fine motor skills that the players need to game well and mental focus to know when to step up and cover a teammate. At the beginning of every practice, the coaches guide teams through wrist stretches and full body scans to prepare, according to Olive.
“It’s important to be physically healthy as well as mentally going into eSports. Without one or the other, you’re at a loss,” he says.
Simon Miller keeps towels on his gaming chair, along with this Nintendo Switch and a headset with a microphone, to dry off his hands as he games. His dad sees how Miller’s team warms up and works together.
“It’s not just talking to get closer with them: you’re constantly talking like I’m moving up, you’re moving back. It’s constant coordination within the game that makes your team better by virtue of talking and of being with the same people who have developed a playing chemistry,” Dave Miller says.
Simon Miller sits in his gaming area to play Rocket League. He attends Kerby Olive’s practices every Monday night along with his peers.
The YMCA’s goal is to build up the mind, body, and spirit of the communities it serves. Envisioning how a league that promotes children staying at home and playing video games would fit into that mission was a challenge, says Gross. But, after talking with lifelong players turned mentors and coaches like Autrey and Olive, she started to see how important a program like this can be. With eight teams on the East Coast in the middle school division, this program is still in its beginning stages with room to grow.
According to the ESA’s, the Entertainment Software Association, “2021 Essential Facts about the Gaming Industry” report, almost 227 million people in the U.S. play video games. Twenty percent of these players are under the age of 18. Gross believes there is an opportunity for the Y to serve more children than ever before by tapping into this demand.
To get a program like this off the ground and thriving, Gross says the Triangle Y has had to focus on convincing parents to allow their children to enroll. She often must pitch eSports to parents, zooming with them to explain the benefits of the league.
Video games are not inexpensive, raising questions about just who the league is serving. Heidi Brasher is the Senior Director, Product Line Cohorts, Strategy and Innovation at YMCA of the USA. She believes to maintain the eSports League’s success Y’s must consider the barriers kids might face.
Video games are an online activity, requiring stable wifi, gaming consoles and access to the software, and other expensive amenities that aren’t necessary for a basketball or baseball league where equipment is provided.
To counter that, the Y is focused on fundraising and ensuring that anyone can get involved, according to Brasher. Each Y operates as its own nonprofit, she says. Every year, the majority of Y’s run an annual fundraising campaign that hones in on raising money for specific programs like eSports.
One goal for moving forward, says Brasher, is to build out spaces in Y’s that can host players’ practices in person. This won’t look like a soccer field or basketball court, but it will have the proper equipment to game and the room to contain an entire eSports team.
eSports is a growing outlet for children not as inclined towards traditional sports to practice teamwork, compete, and collaborate. The eSports arena is expanding quickly, according to Coach Olive.
“Video games are such a unique platform, and introducing the competitive side of gaming into the Y is really interesting. eSports are growing rapidly. You’ll see some eSports on ESPN which is huge. I think it’s really neat that the Y decided to adopt this,” Olive says.
For Simon Miller, whose team is undefeated, he is looking forward to playing against better and better competitors.
“For this league, we’re the best team,” Miller says.
Simon Miller accumulated over 700 hours in Rocket League, which is considered to be an above-average player.
Despite their success, he says he is unsatisfied after his matches. He doesn’t enjoy beating teams who his team is clearly better than: he’s ready for higher stakes.
Luckily for Miller and players like him, Coach Olive believes that these opportunities are coming. Olive hopes some of his players will go on to excel on a national level as the eSports arena continues to expand. And maybe, one day, eSports will be part of the international sports stage by joining the Olympics or have its own equivalent championship.
“I think a lot of these kids have an incredibly bright future, if they stick to the game, and they continue to learn and train. I don’t think that it necessarily ends here. I think they could go on to mythical forces in the land of eSports. If some of them put their minds to it, they could go to some of these big championship leagues,” says Olive.
