Snider High School has developed the area’s first high school esports team and will begin its first season on Monday.
Over 50 students will compete for scholarships against students from around the country in games like Rocket League and League of Legends.
Esports programs have been expanding in popularity at colleges across the country, with more than 100 schools offering scholarships for esports.
Joseph Wilhelm, who teaches physics and chemistry at Snider, developed the program. He said the school has been thinking about esports for a while as colleges and other high schools began to pick it up.
“It really started last year after Snider got first place in the Northeast Indiana TechFest, which is a regional tech competition,” Wilhelm said. “Then my principal kind of started thinking about ‘well, what else can we do for these sorts of kids?’”
Snider received $10,000 from Fort Wayne software company Aptera on Tuesday night. Wilhelm said the money will be used to expand the Esports Arena, by adding more computers and couches.
Wilhelm hopes they’ll be able to expand the facility to support closer to 100 students.
