team pulls together virtually to make push toward a state title

The idea of team members not meeting face to face until they reach a state competition seems crazy, but that’s what the Rural Virtual Academy’s varsity eSports team accomplished this week.

Team members, linked from their homes throughout Wisconsin through Zoom, have been competing in the Wisconsin High School Esports Assocation’s fall season that features the game Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. After tying Mount Horeb for their conference championship with a 7-1 regular season record, the team drew a number-one seed in the association’s Division 2 postseason tournament and beat eighth-seeded Sauk Prairie on Nov. 29 in the opening round.

That pushed the team to a quarterfinal match Tuesday with conference rival and fifth-seeded Kettle Moraine for a spot at state, which it won, advancing the team to the in-person state championships in Madison on Saturday, Dec. 10.

Jesse MacDonald, who is based in Neenah is the RVA’s eSports head coach. The RVA team included about 20 varsity and JV players this fall ranging from sixth to 12th grade. The five-member varsity team of high school students is the group that is headed to state.

“We can have multiple teams,” MacDonald said Monday. “The league allows you to have one varsity team. They only let us play high school students on that team. Then you can have as many JV teams as you want. We designated one to be completely middle school, but one of our other ones we have a few extra high school students and a few extra middle school students so we kind of combined them to a JV team.

“The students are from all over,” he added. “We’ve got some are fairly close to the Medford area. We have some down by Milwaukee. They’re all over the place. If we win (Tuesday), then we have to compete in person in Madison at the state tournament. That’ll be the only time we all ever meet in person.”

RVA will face second-seeded Elkhorn next Saturday in one Division 2 semifinal, while Fort Atkinson meets Mount Horeb on the other side of the bracket. Winners then meet for the title.

The RVA team is part of a growing eSports phenomenon among middle and high schools throughout the state and nation. Medford Area Middle School has had a team for a couple of years now as well and was, in fact, in the same conference as the RVA team for the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate season. The rest of the conference included Mount Horeb, New Berlin Eisenhower, Port Washington, Kettle Moraine, New London, McFar-eSports land and Reedsburg.

“They try to mimic a traditional high school thing where by school size you’re put into a division,” Mac-Donald said. “We’re in Division 2 based on our high school numbers. Then they must kind of randomly put us into two conferences. You play the regular season of eight games. Then they seed you based on how you did in the regular season for the playoffs. By winning conference, we get the number-one seed.”

The RVA team also competes in the Rocket League season, which will begin right after the holidays. Rocket League, which can basically be described as soccer with cars is played with three players at a time on one team. In Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, only one player competes at a time against an opponent from the opposing school. There are five one-on-one contests within the single weekly match.

“The players use the characters from any Mario game possible,” MacDonald said. “Basically you have these characters that all have different abilities that try to knock the other person off the stage. You knock the other person off the stage three times before you get knocked off three times, you win.”

One of the unique aspects of how the RVA plays Super Smash Brothers is it allows parents, friends and fans to be part of the action on Zoom. The chat room is constantly buzzing with messages, there’s a national anthem, contests during down time and a “shout caster” explaining the action for those who are unfamiliar with the video game.

“We invite everybody to come into Zoom,” MacDonald said. “What’s kind of neat and different, is if you think about it from watching any other sport, is that here you have all of the players sitting there with the fans and they can ask questions. For Smash only one player is competing at a time. So the fans can ask questions. We have the one player who is doing all of the announcing so if they need help understanding the game or get some insight they can ask him and he’ll respond and tell them what he’s thinking. It’s kind of a cool ingame experience to get that.”

Like many sports, MacDonald said the RVA team the past couple of years has had excellent players lead and build teams, graduate and then the process starts over with more players practicing and improving hoping to gain varsity spots.

“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “I had a kid really buy into (Rocket League) last year. He wanted to get to the state tournament. So he found two other guys ... they practiced for a year. That was their mission to get good enough. So they came into the season and it was clear they were our three best players. They already knew how to communicate. They won conference but didn’t make it to state but they had a good season.”

While the team has enjoyed success this fall from a win/loss perspective, it also is proud of accomplishing its main objective and giving kids a positive inschool, team experience.

“Here there is no other sports season,” MacDonald said. “There are kids who wouldn’t be able to compete in something, even if they were in a traditional school. Video games is something they can do. It’s nice to reach other kids and I think that’s what the traditional schools are looking at too. How can we get these kids who are not doing anything to be part of something with the school?”