By Lucy Hansen
Assistant Features Editor
The Mira Costa E-sports Team took home another win at the “Battle of The South Bay” competition on April 4, adding to their many wins at E-sports competitions this school year.
The undefeated team, which competes in various video game competitions, was made up of four juniors from the E-sports club: Khai Rizkalla, Harry Avrith, Mathew Long, and Lucas Velleca.
“I think we have yet to lose a tournament as a team in [the categories] Overwatch, Valorant, and Rocket League ever since freshman year,” said Rizkalla.
The club, overseen by Costa Tech and Engineering teacher Greg Selmi, has been working to have a place on campus where they can practice. According to the members, despite Costa being unequipped, they continue to work hard everyday and keep their team’s rank high.
“We started improving as a team and near the end of last year, we beat the team that lost in the CIF finals so we were hopeful moving into this year,” said Rizkalla. “We prepared off-campus, but we didn’t realize Mira Costa wasn’t poised to compete in many high octane tournaments this year.”
At their most recent competition, Costa beat Redondo. According to the team, the competitions are really fun because, like other sports, they get to compete against other people that they know and have the chance to win money doing it.
“The best team is chosen by the winner of an in-house competition,” said junior Henry Avrith. “At the competi- tion, there’s teams from two or more schools and they play each other on computers provided by the competitions. It’s just like any sports tournament; if we win there’s even some prize money.”
According to Avrith, each player specializes in specific games, so the players who attend specific tournaments vary depending on the games being played.
“I think a common misconception is that there is one E-sports team for every game,” said Rizkalla. “The school tries to scout the best players/teams on campus to represent them for each given videogame.”
The E-sports team at Costa is small, but talented. Accord- ing to Avrith, he didn’t even know Costa had an E-sports team before he joined, but he and the other members love getting to play their favorite games with their friends.
“It’s been the same group of people, although different individuals across each game, for the last 3 years,” said Rizkalla. “We are all now juniors. Until we’re gone at least, it’ll be tough finding an opponent that can take us down.”
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