LANARK — Cade Miller can’t wait to get his hands on the controls of his Rocket League car after school on Friday nights.

The Eastland High School junior doesn’t actually have a car entered in any motorsports league, but he still drives one — and what’s more, he plays soccer with it.

How did he get in the driver’s seat of a rocket-powered ride that defies speed limits, and gravity, tearing across and above a soccer field, sending balls careening toward goals? Simple: He just joined an extracurricular club at school.

Miller is one of around a dozen students who are part of the school’s esports program. Esports (short for electronic sports) is competitive video gaming that involves skilled players and organized tournaments. It’s also become a big part of high schools’ extracurricular offerings.

Esports is an officially sanctioned high school sport, with rules and guidelines, leagues, tournaments, and a growing number of students taking part. Here at home, the Illinois High School Esports Association was formed to help support schools’ esports programs. Colleges are getting in on the action too, helping students who are seeking a higher education. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), more than 200 colleges and universities offer nearly $15 million in esports scholarships.

Esports can also help students personally and academically, offering lessons in competitiveness and teamwork, improving social skills, and even improving their grades.

In other words, esports isn’t just fun and games.

“It’s a lot of team building,” Miller said. “It’s a lot of working together to win. You can have a lot of good players and they’d still not win if they can’t coordinate correctly. It’s mainly about teamwork. Skill is valuable, but a lot of it is through knowing your team and working with them.”

Take Rocket League: Billed as a “high-powered hybrid of arcade-style soccer and vehicular mayhem,” the game involves skill and strategy: figuring out force and angles, multiplying mass by acceleration, and determining crafty parabolas that score goals. Teamwork and life lessons come into play too, when students learn to overcome challenges and defeat while honing their skills, with support and encouragement from students and faculty advisers.

Video games have been an American staple for decades, dating back to the 1970s when Pong and Atari came onto the scene before exploding in popularity during the ‘80s — and they’ve come a long since a few lines bumped a square ping poll ball back and forth. As technology evolved, so did video games, leaving the confines of arcades and TVs and finding a world of possibilities online. Today, players can compete with someone on the other side of the world. In the past 20 years, online competitions gave video gaming a whole new dimension. Schools have picked up on the craze in the past decade, and the Illinois High School Association began a statewide competition series in 2022.

Eastland’s program began in late 2023 after its program co-adviser, Joshua Ehlers, found it was a good way to engage students and give them something to do when they weren’t in school. When Ehlers started the program, Miller —who learned about high school competitions while in eighth grade — was one of its first seven students. At the end of the 2024-25 school year, participation more than doubled to 15, and the group now has a co-adviser, Pat Foltz.

“Esports is about building a community through competitive video gaming,” Ehlers said. “It’s ‘The Breakfast Club’ of today. You bring kids together from all walks of life who can come here and have fun making great friendships and have an experience that you might not get elsewhere.”

As to whether esports is an actual sport, Miller offers his opinion: “They say that, and I’m half-there and I’m half-not. You’re not doing anything physically, but it’s very mental. It’s half-and-half because it’s still a competition. You’re still working to win as a team, just like basketball, but in a different way.”

The program meets on Fridays at the school’s media center from January to April or May, depending on how far the group advances in IHSA competition. Students are divided into groups who play various games that IHSA offers in state series competition. In addition to Rocket League, games also include the racing game Mario Kart, one-on-one combat in Super Smash Bros., playing football on Madden NFL 25, and EA Sports FC, another soccer game.

Another difference between today’s games and their Atari-age ancestors: There’s more than just “beating the game.” There’s scoring points, yes, but players also focus on getting the task done quickly and efficiently, and with a sense of style in their game play, all while remembering that they’re part of a group where trust is important.

“It’s teamwork and communication,” Ehlers said. “When these kids go and compete at the sectional level, like in Mario Kart for example, they’re racing, but they’re also like flying in a squadron, because they have to communicate as far as placement goes and know who is around us and who our potential threats are. With the communication skills, they have to be precise, they have to be clear, and they have to be able to think quickly. There’s communication skills, problem-solving skills; and if the situation you’re in changes, how do you change your strategy or play? You got to be thinking on the fly or be thinking creatively.”

Sophie Preston also was one of the program’s original seven students. The junior has been the only girl in the program the past couple of years, and that aspect has added some competitive nature to her experience, she said. Mario Kart is one of her favorite games, and she also enjoys playing Fortnite.

“There’s never a dull moment,” Preston said. “It’s always entertaining, whether you’re good at a game or not good at it. Even if we lose, we still pick each other up, so we make very good bonds with everyone.”

Sophomore Oliver Allen enjoys playing video games and the thought of being able to do it in a school setting appealed to him, especially while having fun with fellow players. He said he enjoys being part of a team and picking up tips from his teammates.

“It’s a real relaxed environment, and you can just come in here and can play games,” Allen said. “There are really comfy chairs. We’re here being casual and having fun while we’re at it.”

In Super Smash Bros., characters compete in one-on-one combat with each other, as characters from various Nintendo games, to knock them off a platform using fight moves and a variety of gadgets. Each character has their own unique skill sets.

“There’s a lot of learning with it, like with different combos and things, you got to take your time and try to get better and better at it,” Allen said. “There’s a lot of progression. Where the variety comes in play is, depending on what character you choose, it depends on how you can play with it. If you have a real heavy character, you have less damage and can fling him off the [platform]; if you’re playing a real light character that doesn’t do much damage, you have to play more efficiently.”

The team hones their skills in competitions against regional schools during the first four months of the season before competing in IHSA competition at the sectional level (a similar concept to sports competition in track and field and swimming and diving). The Chadwick-Milledgeville and West Carroll school districts also have esports programs. It’s still a fledgling activity throughout northern Illinois, and since not many schools in the region offer it, Eastland has to compete in sectional competitions against much larger suburban schools if they want to advance to the state final competition.

While going up against bigger schools has been a challenge, Ehlers is hopeful that the program will continue to grow throughout the region — perhaps through a cooperative arrangement with bordering districts – and that other schools can experience the benefits of esports.

Esports also has a presence at the college level, with Highland Community College in Freeport and Clinton Community College in Clinton having programs.

“I feel we’re reaching success, and I want to share that success with other schools,” Ehlers said. " If I can get more schools in northwest Illinois to get on board, we can take this up the road and go against other schools. We could have a community of schools where we can challenge each other and make it be like an academic bowl, and in that aspect of it, you can pull in more kids as well. As these kids are continuing to have the success that they’re having, they’re going to bring in more of their friends as well."

More than just a competitive outlet, esports helps foster a sense of community among students who may have thought it was “game over” for extracurriculars. According to the NFHS, 45% of current esport players in the U.S. say the program is their first experience in an after-school activity.

With any luck — and skill — it may not be their last. By creating a structured, inclusive environment, Eastland is using esports as a platform to connect students, encourage responsibility and build lasting relationships.

“My vision is to figure out how we can build a community within here,” Ehlers said. “They are somewhere where they are held accountable and where they belong.”

Go to ihsa.org/sports/esports to learn more about esports programs throughout Illinois.