Nancy Daly

ndaly@communitypress.com

UNION – Four seniors at Ryle High School have won full scholarship offers at the first college in the country to provide athletic-based scholarships for e-sports gaming.

Based on their competitive performance in the global online gaming world, Mason Carnes, Kyle Cousin, Henry Kneale and Jake Laumann have received scholarship offers from Robert Morris University in Chicago. The scholarship is based on academic merit as well. The four Ryle students are in the top 10 percent in their class and have a 30 or higher on their ACT.

Two of the students, Mason and Henry, started gaming together while students at Ockerman Middle School. The four have played together since freshmen at Ryle with a special emphasis on the game Counter-strike: Global Offensive.

Jake, 18, a Union resident, learned about the e-sports program at Robert Morris and reached out for more information. “This is the part where it got awesome,” Jake said, because RMU was already seeking to step up its efforts in Counter-strike competition.

Kurt Melcher, RMU’s associate athletic director and e-sports coordinator, said after the Ryle students visited the Chicago campus they were offered full scholarships valued at $22,000 apiece. They’ll compete in the 300-school Collegiate Star League on weekends in the school’s eSports Arena which has 35 play areas and plays to a full house every Saturday. Then they’ll take a full load of classes in whatever area of study interests them.

“It’s not just that they’re coming to play video games. Their job is to get better as a player and the coach is going to push them,” Melcher said.

“It’s not just fun and games,” Melcher said. “They are at an ability level where they want to be pushed.”

From their research, the senior scholarship winners say the e-sports business is on the verge of blowing up in a big way. Online streaming and television interest in professional tournaments is stepping up. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is part of a team that has invested $7 million in a Seattle start-up Unikrn (pronounced “Unicorn”), which offers wagering on competitive video game tournaments, according to Fortune.com.

“Most people see games and they think of people sitting on a couch with a controller just kind of lazing around,” said Kyle, 17, of Florence. There is so much more to it, the teens agree.

Melcher, who proposed bringing e-sports into RMU's sports department, said, “They’re absolutely a sport. They provide all the same benefits that sports provide,” he said. Competitors work as a team, take leadership positions and directions from a coach, rise in skill level. Values of integrity and character, he said, “it all plays in these sports.”

The one thing that separates e-sports from traditional collegiate sports, he said, is cardiovascular exertion.

In 2014 RMU became the first university to offer gaming scholarships for a varsity e-sports team which currently competes in League of Legends, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and Dota 2 competitions.

And that brings us to the Ryle team’s game of choice, Counter-strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO), which had more than 10 million online players last month, according to http://blog.counter-strike.net.

“The game we play, CS: GO, is very skill based,” Kyle said. “You have to play it a lot and you really have to practice in order to be good or at least at the level that we are.”

Jake, who plans to study business management, has decided to accept the RMU scholarship. Henry, 17, of Florence, says he is 95 percent sure. He’s interested in computer science and business. Mason, 18, of Florence, is also nearing a decision and wants to study computers and business. Kyle is still undecided.

Ryle Principal Matt Turner was eager to hear details of the Robert Morris scholarship offer.

“I’m excited and happy for them because they’re going to get something they love to do and they’re going to get paid for it, basically,” Turner said.

Gamers’ snacks of choice

What fuels the scholarship-winning online game players in those high-stress sessions of Counter-strike: Global Offensive? The Recorder asked the Ryle team for the “brain food” that helped get them their full tuition offers.

Jake: Better Cheddar

Kyle: Pistachios or unsalted peanuts

Mason: Sparkling grape juice

Henry: “I’ll eat like whatever, but if I’m having a good time I’m drinking Sunkist.”