Saint Patrick High School recently introduced an E-Sports Club. Led by senior Antonio Iglesias, the E-Sports Club has now become live. E-Sports has been operating for a long time, it has even been a thing since the old ages of games. But it did not gain popularity until the last 20 years. Between 2010 and 2021, e-sports skyrocketed in popularity and now there are millions of viewers on Twitch and YouTube.

E-sports and gaming had a huge jump in popularity when Fortnite was released. There were millions of views on Twitch and many streamers gained fame. Many other popular games like Call of Duty, Halo, Tom Clancy’s: Rainbow Six Siege, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant, and Rocket League contributed greatly to e-sports. With e-sports popularity rising, many schools have started including e-sports clubs, which in the past, was never on their lists.

The future of the E-Sports Club is starting to look bright as it has been in operation for two years. Saint Patrick e-sports has taken a step forward as there is new equipment coming in such as: computers, monitors, keyboards, headphones, etc. There is also a good number of members in the E-Sports Club to help get it going.

There are many games to play in the E-Sports Club such as Rocket League, Fortnite, Valorant, etc. The Rocket League season just began. Saint Patrick has a varsity and JV team competing this season. With new equipment coming in, e-sports games and practices may be played at Saint Patrick soon. Thanks to Assistant Principal for Student Services and Activities Paul Csongradi ‘12, Dr. Joseph Schmidt, former Saint Patrick President and Iglesias, the Saint Patrick E-sports Club has become alive and ready to go.