Brewton-Parker adds esports, following growing trend

MOUNT VERNON — Brewton-Parker College announced the newest addition to their athletics department – esports. Their inaugural season will begin fall 2020.

Brewton-Parker’s co-ed team, co-coached by Jonathan Rose and Peter Thompson, will compete in League of Legends, Rocket League, and Overwatch, with the goal of adding more games to the team later.

Esports are similar to other sports, except, as their name suggests, they’re electronic. Teams play video games on a highly competitive level.

They’re a growing trend on college campuses. Jeanne Weber, senior higher education strategist at Dell Technologies, told InsideHigherEd.com, that esports aren’t simply about gaming, but help encourage innovation and teamwork, develop critical thinking skills, and promote self-directed learning.

In addition, InsideHigerEd.com reported that more students will be looking for esports as a criteria for selecting a college. In fact, they reported that over 100 high schools in Illinois alone offer esports.

“We see the success and growth with esports at a lot of different schools and want to be able to compete at the highest level,” Rose said. “I’m excited to start the recruiting process and give an opportunity for student athletes to receive a college scholarship.”

“I have been playing video games most of my life and made many friends through those games, some of those have lasted ten years and long distances,” Thompson added. “I am excited to give students the chance to play on a competitive level and the chance to practice and train among other great players.”

The BPC Athletics Department is in the process of developing its own on-site gaming arena. This arena will be equipped with brand new Alienware Aurora R9 with a 9th Gen Intel Core i9 9900K processor NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Graphics Card, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB PCIe NVMe SSD, 1 TB of storage, and Alienware 27’’ AW2720HF Monitors.

Chris Dooley, vice president of Athletics and Enrollment Services, also expressed excitement for the new addition.

“E-Sports is the fastest growing intercollegiate sport at this time,” he said. “With Georgia High School Association already sponsoring an esports championship, students in our primary recruiting area are already familiar with esports and we are excited to be able to offer an opportunity for these gamers to continue competing at the collegiate level”.

Any student or prospective student interested in competing on BPC’s esports team should complete this form.