New CMS sport is ‘changing lives in a small way.’ What’s behind growing league’s success?
Kaliek Wade’s penchant for video games began when he was 4 years old.
Gaming on his mom’s phone was a way to keep him still when she needed him to be quiet.
“And playing Angry Birds with my Pa on his tablet,” Wade laughed. “It’s where it all started.”
Wade, a sophomore at Garinger High School in Charlotte, quietly followed his school’s new varsity esports team the last few months, waiting for his turn at the keyboard.
“My competitiveness, I guess, is what hooked me on gaming,” the 16-year-old Wade told The Charlotte Observer. “I like to play against someone to win.”
In 2023, it’ll be Wade’s turn on the keys. He’s on Garinger’s team in the spring season of the new Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools varsity esports and STEM league. When it launched its fall season in November, it became the first-ever high school esports league in North Carolina.
Nearly 700 students participated in the inaugural fall season with help from 25-plus CMS faculty members. In December, six teams advanced to the esports playoffs and 12 schools participated.
Ardrey Kell High’s team won the district’s first championship on Dec. 14. The J.T. Williams Secondary Montessori varsity team won the STEM tournament, which involved each school creating their own video game.
Ericia Turner, CMS athletic director, says she’s seen the power of esports and the positive similarities it has with traditional varsity sports.
“I knew making the launch of this first-of-its-kind league across CMS a priority would enable us to harness the power of meeting these students where they are, while still relaying the powerful lessons of communications, leadership and teamwork varsity sports can provide,” Turner said in a news release.
A ‘unique opportunity’ in CMS
Esports — organized, competitive gaming — has seen rapid growth, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. In 2019, there were 200.8 million occasional viewers worldwide and 197 million esports enthusiasts for a total audience of 397.8 million across the globe. In 2020, the total audience grew to 435.9 million.
By 2024, the audience size is projected to be 578 million viewers.
Tariq Bokhari, a Charlotte city councilman, helped organize the CMS league. The self-professed tech nerd and co-founder of Steigler EdTech, told the Observer the district’s esports league is an opportunity for “us to do something really cool that doesn’t exist.”
“Esports not only enables us to meet the kids where they are with what they love to do already, and relay the lessons normally reserved for traditional varsity sports — working as a team, communication, leadership, accountability,” Bokhari said, “but also make them look at STEM in a way they have not done before – competition.”
Bokhari, a father of three gamer children, says Steigler EdTech partnered with CMS for several years, offering after-school programs and internships before the league’s launch.
“This CMS League was always a personal passion project of mine for the last few years, just trying to will it into existence,” Bokhari said. “The question we are seeking to answer: can the first-of-its-kind varsity esports and STEM league propel CMS to lead the nation in technology workforce development and upward mobility?”
Power of esports
Stiegler EdTech made the league possible through a partnership with Carolina Esports Hub and Tepper Sports & Entertainment, which includes the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Football Club.
Competition involves head-to-head match-ups in Rocket League between varsity and junior varsity teams of the schools. Rocket League is an online game in which players use cars to steer a round ball into a goal. Next year, Bokhari says, they hope to expand to other games.
Mason Gadhia, a 17-year-old junior at JT Williams Montessori, is the captain of his junior varsity team. He says esports bring as much entertainment value as traditional sports.
“My 50-some-year-old mother has started watching every single stream, every single Wednesday,” Gadhia said. “She knew nothing about Rocket League when she started watching. After our game five win in overtime against Olympic, my agriculture teacher talked to me during class about how he was on the edge of his seat during the game and how excited he was when we finally won.”
Weekly Wednesday night competitions are professionally produced and streamed live on Twitch with commentators. The fall season featured teams from Providence, Palisades, South Mecklenburg, East Mecklenburg, Olympic and Hopewell high schools, among others.
“It’s changing lives in a small way now,” Bokhari said. “We took a risk. My hope is it gets bigger, and it’s something we can say was built in our own backyard.”
Across 23 hours of streaming Wednesday Night Lights, the league drew more than 5,000 cumulative live views and 2,120 unique viewers on Twitch, an interactive live-streaming service. Discord, a messaging platform, saw more than 2,900 hours of voice chat, 35,000 messages sent and 100-plus students online when CMS varsity teams practiced.
Bridging the digital divide
Kim Whorley has zero interest in gaming, but on a Wednesday night in mid-November, the mom watched the CMS Rocket League tournament with her son, Wade. It’s when she realized her son’s true passion for gaming.
“I found myself loving something for him,” said Whorley, who added that at one point gaming “truthfully annoyed” her.
Whorley successfully submitted an application for Wade to receive a high-end coding and gaming PC from the Panthers and Charlotte FC organizations.
In her letter, Whorley said she hasn’t been able to keep up with the cost of her son’s love, although she’s worked two or more side jobs for years. Through the years, she’s rented computers and purchased cheaper PCs that ended up in the trash.
It’s why Wade wasn’t able to join Garinger High’s esports team until now.
“He should’ve been on a team,” she said. “But I couldn’t afford it. … It breaks my heart that I cannot still give him what he has ultimately been passionate about for his entire childhood/youth.”
Wade was surprised with the PC in November at Garinger High. He learned how to build the PC — a skill Bokhari says he’ll have for the rest of his life.
“Our No. 1 challenge is addressing the digital divide,” Bokhari said. “Over 80 people applied and told us their stories of how the digital divide is real in their lives.”
Wade still can’t believe he’s now getting the chance to compete in the esports league.
“I’m grateful and excited,” Wade said. “And I’m really glad my mom didn’t have to stress so much over trying to get a computer together for Christmas, since she knew that was the only thing I had wanted.”
