Elementary Esports Divisionals – Planning Time!

With a growing esports presence within Mountain View School Division, I set a goal for myself to help grow opportunities for this type of programming. While our middle- and senior-year students have the option of participating in a variety of games, tournaments, and events through the Manitoba School Esports Association (MSEA), our elementary students do not.

I am very much in the introductory stages of this event but I wanted to share the process as we progress for those who are thinking about planning an event of their own. At the current time, our planning includes:

Location

We have three elementary schools with formal esports teams and I thought it would be most appropriate to try to hold the event in one of these venues. However, one of our schools is under renovation and the other represents the smallest elementary school in the community; so selecting the third was an easy choice.

I then consulted with our IT department to review the following:

• the bandwidth capacity of Minecraft Edu
  • this is the most commonly used esports program at this age level
  • 1.5MB per device
• available school bandwidth capacity and overall school-use average
  • this event takes place during school hours and it was important we did not hold any event that would prevent classroom teachers from holding their regular programming
• location of network access points (AP) and overall capacity
  • this helps us narrow down which rooms in the building would be most appropriate and how many student devices we could operate

Participants

Based on both the bandwidth and room capacity identified from our location discussion, we determined that 40 student participants would be the maximum for this event. Priority will be given to our three schools with formalized esports teams but all will be encouraged to apply for a space with groups of 4 working together as a cohort.

With MSEA-league play beginning with Grade 6, I wanted to plan an event for our Grade 4-5 students that emulated what their experience may be like once they reach this level of play; similar to the junior sports programs our athletic department offers for these grade levels.

Volunteers

I would love to have maximum student participation in this event, including the volunteers. I have already reached out to our middle- and senior-year MSEA teams for their potential assistance. We will be looking for student volunteers from Gr 7-12 to assist with various components of this event including troubleshooting/participant assistance, event emcee, and Minecraft-build judging. In an ideal world, this would be a student-run event with adults helping to facilitate and supervise.

Planning Resources

• Minecraft EDU has a large database of resources, including current and previously-held build challenges
  • These examples will be used to help create our own build challenge that aligns with the parameters of our event
• Manitoba School Esports Association is our provincial network for middle- and senior-years esports
  • They hold regular esport events and their programs can be used as a model for our event
• Justin 🙂
  • My husband was a phys-ed teacher, athletic director, and provincial zone president for a number of years. While I did not grow up in the sports world, he has decades of experience with how to organize sporting events and will be able to share insights into how I can set up certain components of this event

Next Steps

In no particular order:

• finalize the build challenge parameters
• create participant guidebook
• identify the number of required adults and total volunteers
• create a team submission form
• identify participating teams and determine transportation requirements
  • book any required busses and complete field trip request packages

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What would you add to this list?