It’s 5:30 p.m. on a rather cool Wednesday, and suddenly a disembodied, robotic voice announces “30 seconds left on the clock.” The rapid clicking of plastic keys, senior Arnas Meliuksts knows that letting down his teammates is not an option. He strives to win.
Meliukstis is a member of the DGS esports program, a type of sport that, unlike the average sport, is played entirely online. Although commonly seen as a hobby, esports has seen a substantial amount of growth within the past few years, rivaling that of major sports franchises. In spite of this massive influx of money, esports has only recently started to get picked up by the masses, despite existing in the technical sense since 1980.
Meliukstis has played for the program for about two years now, playing for a variety of games and he hopes that as time goes on, people take it as seriously as they do for other sports.
“Some people see it as a nerdy thing or not a real sport; see where they come from with that. Except it is way more serious than that, you know, it’s been going on for the past couple of years from just other games, and it’s just the eSports industry has just been growing in general. So, you know, it’s like, basically a serious thing now and it’s kind of categorized as a sport,” Meliukstis said.
Unlike other sports that center around one singular game, esports revolves around “seasons,” in which every few months a handful of various games are active. For example, in DGS’ case, the games active during the winter season are “Fortnite,” “Overwatch 2” and “Super Smash Bros Ultimate.” Each game’s ruleset is vastly different from each other, and Meliukstis enjoys the ability to have unique experience with each match he plays.
“Usually I’m very excited…If they’re a good team, I will be kind of nervous, but I’m still extremely excited for it. I’m always looking forward to this, I have a great time,”
— Arnas Meliukstis
Meliukstis’s role is a multifaceted one. He’s captain on the varsity Fortnite team, a member of the “Overwatch 2” team and a member of the “Valorant” junior varsity team. Although an avid player of all these games, Meliukstis joined out of pure coincidence.
“Honestly [from] over the announcements, one time last year, there was an announcement for the whole club. And I was interested in it. I showed up to the first meeting and there were a lot of people there, and I just kind of just wanted to play “Fortnite” and I ended up playing more things than just that,” Meliukstis said.
Like all other sports in Illinois, esports is run by the IHSA, specifically under the IHSEA, a branch solely designated for esports. This means that DGS can compete against up to 65 teams all based in Illinois. With all the coordination and communication needed, one man stepped up to take on that role: physics teacher and head sponsor Stephen Zownorega.
“I call myself the esports secretary. I like to organize and make sure that teams have captains that are running practices and making sure that our matches are all set for each week. And we are operating I think over 12 to 15 different games this year, and I just try to make sure that they’re all running smoothly,” Zownorega said.
Zownorega is the key figure behind the program. Running each individual team is an exceptionally involved task, requiring constant communication between each player and with other coaches all to make sure everything is happening as it is supposed to.
For Zownorega, he recognizes that undertaking the job is an involved task, but he doesn’t mind that.
“This program started off as a strictly “Smash Brothers” club about what I’d say eight or nine years ago. And recently, this group, [the] IHSEA has come through and then added a whole bunch of other games and so yeah, the program has been around for a while, and it has recently become an IHSA recognized sport. And so we’ve been competing that way,” Zownorega said.
With all the growth esports has gone through, he wishes for people to see just how involved esports is. He understands that there is a large amount of practicing that happens.
“I know in my experience, a lot of problem solving happens, right? You’re going through “Mario” and you keep doing the same thing, you realize I just can’t do that, I need to figure out a new method to get through there. And so I think if you start to think metacognitively about it, like what are you learning you learn a lot, and I think EA Sports have really taken off because the amount of communication between a team is crucial for success,”
— Stephen Zownorega
Zownorega finds importance in winning, but he holds the relationship building between members in much higher regards. While the goal is to be successful, he wants students to have a great time and get to know each other.
“From a community standpoint, it’s all from our students. A person like Arnas, who is just a positive individual who’s willing to bring other people in and teach them the ropes and all of that. And so individuals that take leadership roles have been a big portion of making a great community… The other thing that I think we’re trying to do is just give people talking about something that they love,” Zownorega said.
Part of this includes working and conversing with each team member to ensure that they feel comfortable and at their best in order to assure that everyone is content. For Meliukstis’s success, Zownorega helps to encourage Meliukstis to try his best.
“I think the moment I talked to Arnas he was like “alright, I want to go after this, I want to do this.” And it’s like, Okay, let me give you the tools to make that happen, let me give you the position to make that happen. And I think when he was paired up with a couple of other individuals that felt that way, it was just giving him the opportunity to do that and Arnas grabbed it and ran with that,” Zownorega said.
