American organisation NACE, or the National Association of Collegiate Esports, has announced that it has signed a partnership with the High School Esports League (HSEL) to provide esports competitions to high school students across the US, helping grow grassroots competition for thousands of students.
HSEL is an existing high school league providing competition over 13 games for 5,800 students right now, but this partnership will create links into collegiate esports as scholarship athletes, since coaches and esports directors at NACE member colleges will get access to HSEL's Discord server to communicate with high school students interested in competing at a college level. What's more is that HSEL will promote the free utilisation of NACE's recruitment platform via BeRecruited for all of its users.
"Our partnership is an important step in laying down the foundation of streamlined recruitment from the high school space to the collegiate. We are seeing an explosive growth in the number of colleges launching varsity esports programs and those programs need qualified students. But this coming August our data shows expected esports scholarships from NACE member institutions to be close to $20 million. These college programs and scholarships represent real opportunities for students to gain quality educations while competing in the games they love. They greatest hurdle preventing this though is a lack of information on both sides. By working with HSEL, and organizations like it, we will be able to educate directly to students. Education here is the first step, activating comes next where we hope to run recruiting events for students and our coaches directly," said Michael Brooks, NACE Executive Director.
"We see this partnership as a major benefit to our students," added CEO of HSEL Mason Mullenioux. "With NACE creating a more stable and legitimate environment in collegiate esports, it opens up so many more opportunities to our partner clubs. Esports recruiting is currently a large pain point for many universities, so together we are taking steps to create a more accessible and organized pathway from high school to college. Along with our GPA requirement we can educate our students on preparations for college admissions, and in turn provide these universities with college ready esports athletes."
Do you think more high school level esports programs should exist?