Video Gaming Club, Teams Thrive at Sturgeon Bay
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Jacobson secures donations, award, grants to build program
Sturgeon Bay students are Door County’s pioneers in interscholastic video-gaming competition.
Dozens of schools statewide had teams in the Wisconsin High School Esports Association (WIHSEA) by 2020, and Sturgeon Bay world geography teacher and wrestling and football coach Stephen Jacobson started the T.J. Walker Middle School’s first video game club in 2020. Currently, he has 80 students who participate at least once a week in the club.
“They play Madden, Minecraft, kind of whatever the kids want to play, as long as it’s school-appropriate,” Jacobson said.
This year the middle school club and high school team both advanced to state-finals competitions, and this spring the high school team started competing in nationwide league play – in Ultimate Rocket League, Brawlhalla, Mario Kart 8 and Rainbow Six Siege – against teams from all over the United States.
Jacobson has had great success raising funds to provide new, school-approved video-gaming opportunities for students to participate in over lunch periods or at the end of the school day.
In March, Jacobson’s successes in and passion for setting up esports at Sturgeon Bay earned a $6,000 Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Teacher Fellowship. After a parent nominated him, he filled out documents and gave detailed answers on his teaching philosophy and programs. He is one of 100 Wisconsin teachers recognized “for their leadership and service in and outside of the classroom, their ability to inspire a love of learning and to motivate their students.”
He plans to use some of the funds to create an exhibit to take to events and to other schools and technical directors to demonstrate how to set up esports programming. That coincides with his North American Scholastic Esports Federation fellowship and efforts to create a middle-school curriculum.
Jacobson said college scholarship money has become a big draw for students.
“Since esports is not an NCAA-sanctioned program, Division III and Division II schools can offer esports scholarships,” Jacobson said. “We try to make sure we offer the same games during our esports seasons that colleges are recruiting for because there are millions of dollars up for grabs.”
Like many teachers, he sometimes brings in materials from home, such as his Wii Bowling setup. In addition to modern games, he has conducted an in-school Super Mario Bros. 3 challenge to see who could get the farthest. He said of the old games, the students thought it was torture to play the notoriously difficult and tricky Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
“It makes me really sad that Wii is now considered retro,” he said.
But the students seem to love the game, and perhaps even his stories.
“I bring in my Wii and all of my characters from college are on there – like, ‘Yeah, that was the guy I played college football with and that was his crazy girlfriend.’”
Last summer, Jacobson successfully acquired a donation of 30 gaming chairs valued at $7,500 that he and his wife assembled before the beginning of the school year. He also won an $890 grant from the Network of Academic and Scholastic Esports Foundation and a $28,000 grant from Herb Kohl Philanthropies. He used those funds to acquire high-end PCs with the speed needed for modern games as well as monitors and controllers that fill one classroom.
While it’s mostly fun and competition, he received school board approval in 2021 for a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math elective course for game design. Students learn about game programming and how old games were created, learn about esports career clusters, do game reviews and build basic games from scratch using code.
This fall, the high school team played Super Smash Bros. in the WIHSEA, with the varsity going 17-10 and making it to the state finals. Sturgeon Bay also fielded teams for junior varsity and underclassmen.
One middle school team finished second in its division at a state meet.
Also, this winter, the high school team advanced to the state quarterfinals in Ultimate Rocket League.
Sevastopol schools also are getting into gaming. Sevastopol instructor David Phillips added computers with faster processing speeds to a grant application he wrote this year. New high school English teacher Carol Schumacher ran a video game club at Cedar Grove, and expressed willingness to help Phillips start a club, intramurals and eventually a competitive team.
Lest other coaches worry about losing athletes to the game room, Jacobson has that figured out for his own student-athletes.
“Luckily, we have several middle school and high school esports competitors who also played a traditional sport at the same time this year without incident,” he said. “Because we’ve been so flexible with our schedule, I’ve yet to have a student tell me they are quitting a traditional sport to pursue esports.”
He limits after-school esports practice times so they don’t interfere with athletics. Team rosters have alternates and substitutes ready to step up for competition, too.
