ST. GEORGE - Over the past decade, competitive video gaming has evolved into a legitimate career path, and Woodlawn High School in East Baton Rouge Parish is allowing students to explore the world of Esports while still in school.

Students on the Esports team are not only finding success in the gaming arena but also setting up and managing tournaments.

"At our events, we have at least four to five kids that switch out through the games and do broadcasting, and they all have, like, I want to say a cheat sheet on the desk where some kid is learning about all the students that play the games, getting all the history of them. You have your color commentator and you have your play-by-play,” EBR Schools Director of Network Operations & Esports Jeffery Harrison said.

Harrison says he started working on Esports for the district around five years ago because students wanted to play games, especially Super Smash Bros.. He got the idea to use it as a way to educate them as well. He says the gaming tournaments are a way to teach.

"They do check-in processes, even going around doing the technical work, making sure that everything is working, the equipment. If there's a hiccup on one of the stations in the arena, they go over there and help out, so now they're learning IT skills at the same time," Harrison said.

Woodlawn High's team is part of the East Baton Rouge Esports League, or EBREL, which features several other schools and teams from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.

"On the national level, the past couple of years we've been playing in the Central League for PlayVs as well, and in the 2023-2024 school year, we actually became second-ranked nationally," Woodlawn junior Kaeden Dunston said.

Along with being the director of Esports for the league, Harrison is also the Executive Director of the Louisiana Scholastic Esports Federation, or LASEF, which the league runs under.

"What we (LASEF) do is focus on using Esports as a catalyst to bring students in and then use that for teaching them about jobs, so we have shoutcasting, we have event organization, video production," Harrison said.

Several members of the team are student ambassadors for the EBRPSS Esports Program, such as Dunston, who is the league's current Vice-President of Operations.

"We have a whole student government that does that. Right now, we're actually working on building a new arena for the year of 2027 in February. Kaeden, he's our Vice-President of operations, he goes around the arena, making sure that everything is running well," Harrison said.

Another career path that Esports can lead to is marketing, something that Woodlawn junior and student ambassador John Beckman has taken an interest in.

"So far, I believe we have Reddit, we actually just got a Google Classroom, we have Facebook, we have TikTok, we have Instagram, there's also a YouTube as well," Beckman said.

The students involved, as well as Harrison, say that the University of Louisiana has essentially become a pipeline for them because of its Esports programs.

"We had a student graduate last year, and he got a scholarship for college through Esports. They're also able to meet people at different competitions, and it's wonderful for the opportunities," Woodlawn High's Esports Co-Coach Gabriella Curry said.