LUDOWICI -- Growing up (or even in the present), people would gather with friends for tournaments in the latest video games such as Madden, NBA 2K, and Mario Kart.

Now, video gaming has evolved with the installation of E-Sports (short for Electronic Sports).

It gained popularity Asia, growing heavily in China and South Korea.

Gamers can even earn college scholarships from E-Sports.

The GHSA added E-Sports as a varsity sport four years ago.

Long County High School has elected to participate under the leadership of Caleb Bailey in the GHSA’s third official season.

“E-Sports is for competition video games,” Bailey said. “It’s really taken off the last ten years or so. It’s become a professional thing and now colleges offer scholarships for it. Ever since I saw the GHSA was offering it on Twitter, I was like, ‘We need to get that here because the kids would love it.’ I sent an email, and they had an interest meeting a month later. We wanted to get in on Season 0, but we were still very new to it and didn’t realize how much money would go into it. There’s going to be two seasons – one in the fall and one in the spring. I’m going to be the head coach of the spring season. I was one of the few teachers that know about video games that could make this a pretty successful thing.”

As a remote sport, the competitions will take place at the participating schools.

Super Smash Bros., Rocket League, and Madden will be played in a series style situation.

“All the competition will be taking place at our respective schools until the state championship round,” Bailey explained. “It’s kind of like tennis. One player plays another player from the other team – best two out of three. And then overall it’s a team best two out of three. On Wednesdays we will play Super Smash 3v3. Rocket League is best out of five three versus three. Madden’s best two out of three one versus one.”

Jumping in during Season 3 for GHSA, Bailey has playoff aspirations and wants to create the family-like atmosphere that is shared in other sports.

“The expectation that I told the players were playoffs. We’re going to make the playoffs in one if not all three of the games,” Bailey stated. “The kids play at home. So might as well do it as a team and build relationships and memories. I want them to feel just as much of part of a team as they would if they played football, basketball, or baseball. But I also want to win too. We’re expecting to do something. How the playoffs work is not the best 16 or 32 teams. How ever many teams in a divisible bracket make it is how many can make it. So, if it’s 65 teams that play Madden, 64 make it. So, there’s a lot of room for us to make the playoffs. We just got to show up and do what we got to do. Our goal is to win a state championship, but I don’t expect it this year. But I’d like to bring home a trophy. Every one of the kids are underclassmen. They can get better, and we can improve our technology as we go through it. It’s going to take a commitment from those guys and our admin.”

Everyone plays video games.

So, practicing at home is essential.

“A lot of these kids already have switches or PlayStations at the house,” Bailey said. “It’s really important for them to continue to play and practice at home because we only have an hour here once a week. We’re going to take it very serious here. It’s vital to our success for them to practice at home. They don’t even realize they’re practicing. We can’t ask a football player to go home and practice. It’s different. We struggle getting kids to watch a football game at home. But these kids play the switch and Rocket League during class. So, it’s going to be a matter of trying to get them to not do it during class versus doing it at home. They do it every day anyway.”

The inaugural Blue Tide E-Sports team are preparing for their first season which begins in late February.

“Right now, we’re in the preseason,” Bailey said. “And we can continue having scrimmages right now if we want to. But the first official gameday would be the 21st of February. The schedule will come out when the GHSA makes it. We can scrimmage whoever sets up one on PlayVS. There’s college and professional teams on there. I would love to scrimmage and professional team just so they can understand that these are really good teams. Right now, I would expect to play someone like Wayne County and Liberty. They all have teams.”

The first contest will take place on Monday, Feb. 21.