Deep in the basement of Mount Carmel, one man leads nine talented students. They are not your typical athletes, and they are not the face of MC, but they can still kick your butt on a computer.
“It’s somewhat in between a club and a full-time sport,” says Mr. Dominic Scheuring, who leads this tiny squad of gamers in the MC E-Sports Team.
Mr. Scheuring started the club when several students approached him about creating a video game club. In the beginning, they played the 2015 tactical shooter game “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege” but then moved to competing in “Overwatch.”
“I had played ‘Overwatch’ before high school, so I kind of understood what the game was about,” said Brady McQuillan ’24, one of the captains of the “Overwatch” team who joined as a sophomore. “I thought, hey, maybe I should try it out.”
“Overwatch” is a multiplayer first-person shooter released in 2016 by Blizzard Entertainment. The game gained popularity after its release and tournaments followed soon thereafter.
In 2019, Blizzard announced a sequel, “Overwatch 2”, which the MC team currently plays. “Overwatch 2”, unlike its predecessor, is free-to-play, meaning the game is free to install on a computer or console.
“The only barrier is that the other games are on consoles, not PC,” said Mr. Scheuring when asked about expansion beyond playing on PCs. “We invested our infrastructure into PC.”
He believes that if people want a game to be added, he needs committed players. Mr. Scheuring knows that without committed competitive members, the group just becomes more of an amateur club.
So who is arguably the face of Caravan E-Sports? That would be junior Aidan McGovern.
“I found a game which I got good at,” said Aidan McGovern, captain of the MC “Rocket League” team.
“Rocket League” is a vehicle soccer game released in 2015 by Psyonix and has been known as one of the most popular games online with over 40 million downlands.
It also has a cult following of fans. The developers of the game organized their own annual esports league, “Rocket League Championship Series” in 2016, with an annual viewership of over 150,000.
McGovern is one of MC’s most under-discussed athletes, being one of the top “Rocket League” players in the world. Last year he led the team to the championship of the Central Region of PlayVS, which is a national esports organization with high school esports leagues. Students and faculty across the school tuned in this past February to cheer the Caravan Rocket Leaguers in that match vs. McHenry.
Although the team didn’t secure that series win, the team has high hopes this year. They expect to go far and to do well in the playoffs, even with the departure of key player Isaiah Heard ’23. The team plans to push on and attempt to secure the championship win they are destined for.
As much as MC is known as one of the best schools for athletes, many still push for that squad of the underbelly of MC. With esports booming around the globe, we could see it continue to grow at MC going forward.
And just maybe we could see a championship banner for MC E-Sports in the Cacciatore Gym.
