St. John’s Prep Hosting A Different Kind of Sports Camp

COLLEGEVILLE (WJON News) -- One local high school is holding a sports camp of a different kind next week. St. John's Prep will be hosting its Esports Camp from Monday through Thursday. Esports is growing in popularity at both the high school and college level throughout the country.

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The St. John's camp will focus on one of the original Esports games, League of Legends. Kids will get to learn how to improve their skills in the game and work in teams. St. John's Esports Head Coach Charles Miller says they will also teach some "shot caller" or team lead skills:

"And that's the hardest part for the youngsters to learn in the game because you're trying to layer that on top of those individual skills I was talking about so what's great about the camp is we have this big amount of time, it's hard in practice to be able to work on that and play a game against another team for example so you end up sort of like in traditional sports during the season is not really when you work on skills."

Miller says they have some nationally known coaches and players attending in person and virtually to teach the kids and the camp is full. St. John's Prep has had an Esports team for 5 years and has placed 2nd in the state tournament all five years. Miller says more and more schools are adding Esports teams and people would be surprised how grueling the camp can be:

"It really wears you out mentally when you're focused this hard on something this intense for that long so we do take breaks, we'll stretch, go for walks, stuff like that but if it was much longer than that you'd get kind of burned out on the intensity of it."

He says Esports is an important activity for schools to offer for kids who might otherwise fall through the cracks:

"This is a chance for them to be a part of a team, part of something they wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise, it's super  accessible so kids who maybe couldn't participate in other sports can be part of the same sport, teamwork camaraderie that you get out of those teams while being in a wheelchair or being marginalized by other aspects of the community."

Miller says Esports is one of the few sports that is co-ed and their athletes were the first in the state to earn a varsity letter in Esports. The Esports Camp runs from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. each day.

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