BCSD set to add esports, hopes to engage new group of students

Aug. 13—As local schools seek new ways to keep students engaged and foster bonds between classmates, esports continues to grow in Kern County.

This fall, Bakersfield City School District will become the next governing body to offer competitive gaming as an activity for students. BCSD will begin with three initial middle schools, then hope to expand to its remaining junior highs the following semester, said Virtual Learning Coordinator Rayshell Fambrough.

"We'll be able to have a full season with our pilot schools," she said, "and then order the pilot technology that we need and train the coaches that are required."

Fambrough and her district believe that esports will provide "a valuable home-to-school connection" for students who might not otherwise participate in extracurriculars, while helping them hone skills in communication and situational awareness. "Rocket League," the game BCSD plans to offer, was released by Psyonix in 2015 and essentially consists of soccer contested between teams of flying cars.

While the Kern High School District founded a thriving league of its own in 2018 and Standard School District added esports this year, the inspiration for BCSD's program came from a free symposium hosted by the Riverside County Office of Education in late 2020.

The RCOE had started its own esports league a year earlier and, by hosting the event, was looking to increase buy-in within its own region while also drawing on its statewide network. The office invited a wide swath of the esports world — players, coaches, scholars, teachers — to provide "a broad view of esports all the way from professional level all the way down to school implementation," said RCOE educational technology coordinator Steve Hickman.

"We have kind of a formula that we go by with esports," Hickman said. "The first thing it does is it increases the sense of belonging in the school. Not all kids love learning, not all kids love the social aspects, and so esports is sort of a universal language for many kids."

Fambrough and a colleague who attended the symposium were sold on the vision. Since then, Fambrough and select team members have maintained a 30-minute weekly meeting since to work on the "passion project." They bought equipment in early 2021 angling for a spring 2022 season, but were hampered by supply-chain issues.

Along the way, the BCSD crew has used resources from Chris Aviles, a New Jersey-based educator known as "The Teched Up Teacher" and founder of Garden State Esports. Aviles developed a curriculum "designed to enhance the social and emotional development of esports athletes" and co-authored "The Esports Education Playbook."

Aviles said in an interview that educators who might be reluctant to get on board with esports should know that "esports is an investment in STEM."

"The computers that you use to play esports on are the same computers that you're teaching computer science on," he said.

Hickman added that educational value for esports can be even more important for younger age groups, which is why Riverside is using "Minecraft: Education Edition" to integrate gaming into elementary schools.

BCSD's choice of "Rocket League" provides a point of differentiation with the KHSD league, which competes in multiplayer online battle arena "League of Legends" and first-person shooter "Overwatch."

For its own league, RCOE had deliberately chosen not to include violent games in order to help sell schools and parents on the idea of esports: "We wanted to minimize the opposition that we get early on," Hickman said.

Justin Smith, the esports coach at North High, has worked with BCSD throughout the process, with several members of the BCSD esports group attending KHSD's spring "Overwatch" championship — "The excitement, the camaraderie, the teamwork, it was amazing," Fambrough said.

Regardless of the title they're playing, middle school esports players will become familiar with "the way teams are built, the way coaching is done, the way analysis after a match is done," and so on, before they arrive in the KHSD league, Smith said.

"Realistically, the game doesn't matter all that much, so long as the kids are competing in a healthy, friendly environment," he added.

Smith said he believes having more middle school teams will be "an amazing, positive benefit for the high school programs."

Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.