It’s a balmy Saturday morning in mid-June, and at Spring Creek Education Campus in East New York a group of high schoolers are gathering for a first-of-its kind sporting match in the neighborhood. The home team players, from the Academy for Young Writers High School, mill around and talk strategy, while their coach hovers nearby. The visiting team, from Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, has just arrived, and they seem jittery; one worries aloud that they might “get their asses kicked.” Soon it’s time to begin play, and the two teams take to their field: a long row of black laptops equipped with headphones and mice and hooked up to a massive projection screen, where, for the next hour, the AFYW Lunar Ravens and the Roosevelt Sharks will battle it out in a friendly match of League of Legends, a multi-player battle-arena video game in which players fight their way across treacherous terrain with the goal of destroying their opponent’s “nexus” (LoL speak for “fort”)… Welcome to high-school sports in the twenty-first century. — Alexandria Neason
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Members of the Academy for Young Writer's High School "esports" team concentrate on their screens during a competitive game of League of Legends, held on June 11 at Spring Creek Educational Campus in East New York, Brooklyn. From left: Mohammed Islam, Christian Colzier, Keron Antoine, Jon Fondeur, and Andrew Hernandez.
The League of Legends competition held earlier this month in East New York was the first of its kind in the neighborhood.
Jon Fondeur, 16, and Andrew Hernandez, 17, prepare before their match against Roosevelt High School.
The AFYW Gaming Collective talks shop before the competition.
Tony Patrick (center), a mentor with the non-profit Pathways to Leadership program, looks on as Mohammed Islam (L) and Christian Colzier (R) gear up to play League of Legends. Colzier and Islam, both 17, are members of the Academy for Young Writer's High School Gaming Collective.