Summer camp for a digital age: St. Clair College coaches kids on esports

Forget swimming lessons and s'mores. Summer camp for 11-year-old Landon Evans involves honing his skills on competitive video games like Valorant and League of Legends.

"It's really interactive," said Evans — one of the enrollees in St. Clair College's Esports Bootcamp, which is taking place over the remainder of the month. "It's really fun and I think I've made a few friends."

Gaming is a family tradition for Evans: He says both his parents and his younger brother are video game enthusiasts — although each has their own preferences among the many gaming genres.

"My mom plays more relaxing games like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley," Evans said. "My dad is into virtual reality racing, like with a steering wheel in a virtual car and you race against other people."

As for Evans, he's looking forward to the camp's culminating tournament next week on the first-person shooting game Valorant — currently the fourth most popular competitive video game in the world.

"I don't think I'll win," he said humbly. "But it'll be fun just to play and see how it all turns out."

This is the first year that St. Clair College has offered esports camps for kids ages eight to 17.

A pilot program took place over March Break. The summer program is more extensive, consisting of two weeks of day-long activities at the Esports Nexus building on the St. Clair College campus.

"It's an educational setting," explained Valerie Shih-Lau, marketing and events manager of St. Clair College's esports team. "We don't view it as them just playing video games. We're constantly teaching them, we're constantly mentoring them."

"It's more educational than, honestly, regular summer camps like I went to when I was younger... I would say these skills are more applicable and more valuable in this day and age, when everybody has a piece of technology on them at all times."

Enrollees spent Monday morning acquainting themselves with the game that has consistently been at the top of esports charts for the past 15 years — League of Legends.

The multiplayer "battle arena" game has a team format: Five players must co-ordinate their attacks and defences against five other players, with the destruction of the other team's base as the ultimate win condition.

"It has to do with leadership," said Alexa Kovacevich, a 22-year-old student counsellor at the camp and a specialist at League of Legends. "That's a main goal — to teach teamwork and working together." 

Gaming sessions aren't the only component of the camp. Enrollees also learn about the ever-growing industry of video game content creation, such as esports casting and live streaming.

Shih-Lau says the camp encourages development of both "hard" skills — such as experience with the video-editing software CapCut, and "soft" skills — such as effective communication and collaboration with other camp enrollees.

"These are skills that can be applied to almost any setting," Shih-Lau said. "Competitive integrity, learning how to be a good teammate, learning how to thrive in a competitive environment."

And for those critical of a summer camp involving so much screen time, Kovacevich points out that the schedule includes regular breaks for offline interactions and exercise.

"They're not just staying on video games all day, looking at the screen all day. We take them outside and get them physical activity as well," she said.