As an up-and-coming club within the school, eSports meets every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the glass classroom in the library to play video games. 

At these after school practices, students currently play Super Smash Brothers with Valorant and Rocket League being added. Members are split between a Varsity and Junior Varsity team. Both teams compete against other schools in various districts. Club sponsor Jon Merz said those about to participate in a competition will study stats regarding the opposing teams. 

“[Meetings are] usually practice. We have scouting reports. If we’re about to play against another school district, we actually use data that [references] different things like wins. Certain players play with certain characters. I create scouting reports for the students. Usually, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, we just practice, and we’ve looked at scrimmaging against other schools,” Merz said. 

Both Junior Varsity and Varsity practice together but have respective team captains and assistant captains. Assistant Captain of Junior Varsity freshman Brody Johnston said the club plans to offer more games in the future to attract more members. 

“I joined eSports Club because I wanted to meet new people and have fun after school. Also to have an excuse for bringing my switch to the school. We are hoping to gain more members for our club, and we are hoping to play more games in the future,” Johnston said. 

Varsity captain junior Brianna Czuppon said the main focus of the club and her main goal as team captain is to strengthen individuals’ skills. 

“As a captain, I try my best to help our members improve. Our club strives to be an open, learning environment, and so after playing matches against each other, we try to share what we noticed, whether that be habits or playing style,” Czuppon said. “The goal is to be able to learn from other people to hone each member’s individual playing style. Our team has grown so much, but even still there is a lot we can improve on, and I’m super excited to see more of that growth throughout the rest of our season.” 

This is Merz’s first year sponsoring the club, but he said his main goal for the future is to present members of the club with scholarships opportunities they can utilize. 

“[My goal is for the club] to grow as much as possible [and] have scholarship opportunities. That’s kind of a big thing for students- if there’s a possibility of getting scholarships,” Merz said. “So, we’re going to be using our YouTube channel and other things to kind of promote the students, and hopefully, we can get scholarships from other universities or other colleges basically to recruit our students.” 

Nevertheless, Czuppon said students should join the club to have fun and enjoy playing video games. 

“People should join our club because we are a laid-back group of people who are looking to improve and to have fun together playing video games.Our club is new to Summit this year, and we’re looking to expand into many other games depending on the interest level of our members,” Czuppon said. “We may not be competing in one game now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t next year.”