The gridiron. The pitch. The diamond. The court. The ice. Athletes play sports on a variety of fields, but recently, a new arena has arisen as a contender to the traditional ones: cyberspace. A sport unlike any other, esports, the competitive playing of video games, has become more mainstream in recent years, with many matches being watched live in sold-out venues across the country and world. Esports has also become commonplace on most college campuses, with universities fielding teams for all sorts of games, from Overwatch to Super Smash Bros. One of the natural next steps for the industry is competition at the high school level, and this school year, Madison has entered the arena.

Under the direction of VHSL, esports has flourished in Virginia from as early as the 2019-2020 school year. The program is not a club, but rather an official sport with leagues, playoffs, and state championships, with the one for this year being held at Old Dominion University, in April 2024. The program has both fall and spring seasons and this year, Madison will be participating in the spring season.

“Eventually, it will probably look like we have a varsity team and a JV team. Right now, it’s in its early stages [so] any students that want to participate can,” art teacher and head coach of the esports team Matt Dunn said.

Rounding out the coaching staff are Dan Grossman, a math teacher at Madison, and Richard Staats, a coach for the Madison cheer team.

“We’re going to hold tryouts in January, and what that’s going to do is that’s going to allow myself, Mr. Grossman, and Coach Staats to sit down, see the different potentials amongst players, and form teams based on abilities, chemistry, and all of those factors,” Dunn said.

VHSL has partnered with an organization called PlayVS, which will help them to create the leagues and brackets for each of the games. Currently, the three games that VHSL is offering (and that Madison will be participating in) are League of Legends, Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. PlayVS offers other games as well, such as Madden, NBA 2K, Hearthstone and Valorant, and VHSL will be evaluating whether to add more games at the end of this school year, so it’s likely that the game offerings that they have now will be expanded on next year in fall of 2024.

Because tryouts for all three of the teams are in January, students who want to participate still can, even if they didn’t come to the interest meeting. The tryouts will be held the week of January 8-12, after school.

“We’ve been encouraging all the students that have interest to hone and sharpen their skills from now over winter break,” Dunn said. “We figure that’s a good chance to do it.”