Students in the Shaler Area School District will have access to expanded competitive eSports programs when they return to school.

It’s not a surprising development when you consider that eSports is a billion-dollar industry in the U.S., according to Eloise Milligan, coordinator of academic services for the Shaler Area School District, who oversees the program.

Competitive eSports — or gaming — refers to online video games. At the middle school level, kids are playing games like Minecraft and Rocket League, which Milligan describes as middle school-appropriate games.

“The amount of students who signed up for this class in the first year was just absolutely amazing, about 25% of our entire eighth grade population. So, after last year’s participation, we decided we need to up our game and add more classes for these students, (including) more sections of eSports to eighth-grade students, knowing that the demand was so high last year.”

But what has made eSports so popular?

“The students like the fact that it’s more of a free environment for them. They take ownership over the sports,” Milligan said.

The students are learning social and emotional skills, teamwork and collaboration, she said.

“Everything they’re doing in the class aligns with our ‘Portrait of a Graduate,’ which is (an initiative) that the district has in place for every kid to attain six different areas of skillsets to show that they’re ready and prepared for careers beyond the K-12 setting. We’re aligning everything to skills students need to have success, to careers in eSports that they can participate in after high school.”

This year, for the first time, Shaler students will be competing in eSports with other students at schools across the state and region. Milligan, a former middle and high school principal, said it all contributes to students being re-engaged with school.

“I was seeing at the middle school and high school level students becoming disengaged and we really needed to improve attendance across the district,” Milligan said. “So we started looking at ways to really bring kids to school. I said eSports would be the perfect class for students to want to come and attend. It engaged them more in the school system and it kept them there.”

It isn’t just fun and games. Milligan said it teaches the students math skills, science skills, engineering skills, critical thinking, marketing and communication.

“So, it really covers everything that you would want a student to learn,” she said.

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