In episode 228, we talk with Edmond Memorial High School Esports Coach Kate Swearingen about the teams playing against others across the state. You can find their games on Twitch.
Transcript:
og228
Michael: Greetings
and salutations my fellow geeks and welcome to episode 228 of the Okie Geek
Podcast brought to you by Okie Comics I'm Michael Cross. Students at Edmond
Memorial high school are enjoying the ever-growing community of e-sports. Their
coach is chemistry teacher, Kate Swearingen and she joins us now, Kate, welcome
to the show.
Kate: Hi, it's so
great to
be here.
Michael: So just
tell me first off e-sports at Edmond Memorial High. What's going on with that?
Kate: Yeah, so we
have a great program. We run three different games. We have Rocket League,
League of Legends and Smash Brothers. A ton of kids are involved. So it ranges
because we have a club and a class we have about 30 plus kids in the class, and
then we have just extra kids in the club, but we're hoping to even grow more
next year. But yeah, it's, it's really exciting stuff.
Michael: What made
you decide to start this thing?
Kate: So I've
always had a passion for making sure that kids have a space that they feel like
they belong.
And I used to work at a middle school where I started an
animate club and I would DM, Dungeons and Dragons as well. For a group of kids
there. And then when I moved to the high school, I knew I wanted to coach
e-sports because I played a MOBA at that time called heroes of the storm, which
isn't really around anymore.
But then, well it's around, but it's just not the same as it
used to be. But then a kid approached me cause I kind of let them know, you
know, Hey, like I like this based on like this to a kid approached me. He's
like, I really want to start a League of Legends team. And I knew about League
of Legends because in the same genre that I played so I was like, yeah, this
would be great.
You know, like some of my stuff will transfer over. So it
kind of took him the rest of the year to get the club going. And then last year
we had our first team League of Legends team. And then this year we have it as
an actual class. So we have even more e-sports now than we did last year. Cause
each of each of the own games are their own e-sports so,
Michael: , And
there's a community like a whole competition going on.
Correct.
Kate: Right. , we
participate in two different tournaments right now. We're a part of OBSL which
is the whole global e-sports league. And there are several high schools in
Oklahoma that participate in that one. And that's our state tournament. And our
playoffs will be April 3rd, but we're, we're sort of finishing up the regular
season.
We have just a couple more games of that to go. And then
we're a part of a nationwide tournament. That's called play BS. So we, we play
in that as well. And those, those real games, we have pre-season games right
now, but we're starting our real games for that. At the beginning of
March.
Michael: That's
amazing.
And so how are you guys doing so far?
Kate: We're doing
really, really well. We haven't started our real play yes games but for our ESL
games right now, we're undefeated. So in all of our sports,...
