Carmel College joined the inaugural NZ High School ESports competition this year with 5 teams and 22 girls competing each week. ESports is a form of competition using PC based video games with organised, multiplayer game competitions. We are excited to have 2 teams of Rocket League, one Valorant team and one League of Legends this year. The girls involved were keen to explain that ESports has many positive benefits:
During the qualifying tournament round of the competition, all our 4 teams worked extremely hard, training, coordinating games and competing online against other schools. Each team and individual worked extremely hard to improve their skills and the entire team worked together collaborating to play the best games possible and attempt to defeat the opposition teams.
Valorant – our Valkyries Valorant team comprised Emmy Aziz, Isabelle Pabalan, Heather Capa, Kiara Tablizo, Pruna Lee, Salina Xiao and Phoebe Rodriguez . These girls had fun and competed against other NZ schools in Valorant. It’s really fun to develop new strategies as well as skills while competing in ESports. Valorant has encouraged teamwork and strengthened our players’ collaborative skills, as well as elevating our strategic ability, fluid intelligence and quick thinking. ESports has traditionally been a male-dominated industry, so to be able to represent Carmel and play Valorant as an ESports team is such an amazing opportunity. Even more, to have started an ESports club at school is exciting enough and will definitely encourage more girls to get interested in and join ESports next year as well as challenge the status quo.
Rocket League – two rocket league teams including Mackenzie Carkeek, Eden Hardy, Angela Lim, Jessica Robinson, Kiersten Fernandes, Keira Flohr and Chloe Ronquillo played every Thursday night against other schools in the Auckland region. These girls showed great commitment and sportsmanship in all their games which were mainly against experienced boys’ teams.
League of Legends – our League of Legends Valkyries team, which included Melissa Churchouse, Francine Lepine, Venise Sta Maria, Lanna Lagasca, Nicole Elumba-Alparito, Chloe Jia, Lourdes Tuano and Lindsay Lagasca was victorious in the competition’s qualifying rounds coming second in their pool. We are the only all girls school to make the National top 8 in Division 2. Our League of Legends Valkyries team are now competing in the semi finals of the Nationals after winning their quarter final last week. We wish you the best of luck in the remaining rounds of the competition.
Next year we hope to have many teams playing ESports for Carmel College and will be fundraising for equipment so games can be played online at Carmel College.
