WOODBURY – Nonnewaug’s E-Sports Team, founded this past fall, has participated in several Super Smash Bros events and competitions. Now they’ve started a second team, one that will compete in Mario Kart events. This, however, brought some issues for the team. For the entirety of their fall season, Nonnewaug E-Sports had to travel to Post University to compete against other teams. This was due to the firewalls put up by the school to prevent students from doing online gaming while at school, more specifically, in class.
According to Katie Blake, Nonnewaug E-Sports and club supervisor as well as NHS faculty member, there has been a need for these infrastructure upgrades.
“We weren’t even able to play due to the firewall that was set up to block games,” Blake said, “We had to install a separate line just for E-Sports competitions.”
Due to the complications with the school using applications such as Securly, there had to be an entirely separate internet line installed so that the E-Sports Team could compete from Nonnewaug High School’s campus. This made things much easier for the competing teams and the school as well.
“We can now have multiple teams competing here rather than traveling to Post University every week,” Blake says.
The internet connection also helps improve the gameplay itself.
Rather than worrying about potential lag or connectivity issues throughout the competition, team members can just focus solely on the game itself. That and doing the best they can to win every match that comes their way.
The fiber internet was approved by Principal Dr. Mykal Kuslis and started installation over winter break. Due to the multi-step process, the connection was fully completed until late January, just in time for the next wave of E-Sports matches.
“The biggest concern was that to qualify [for E-Sports competitions], our lag has to be under a certain number,” Kuslis said. “The current WiFi would make that requirement impossible to meet and there were too many other issues. After exploring many options the only viable answer was to install an entirely new connection.”
Now that the connection has been fully installed, the Nonnewaug E-Sports Team has never been happier. Additionally, their gameplay has never been more efficient.
“The connection has greatly improved our gameplay and helped prevent anything that might disrupt it,” says Delia Coelho, a competitor on the Mario Kart E-Sports Team. “It’s also much better now that we can compete from the school rather than having to go back and forth between here and Post University.”
From an administrative perspective, there are many benefits to having student competitors stay on campus.
“Having access to compete from the school rather than traveling allows the teams to practice and compete in a familiar environment,” Kuslis said. “Additionally, it provides better accessibility for our competitions and the games themselves.”
Overall, the additional connection has allowed the E-Sports team to flourish this season and strive to get their name to the top of the leaderboard. This spring season will certainly be one to follow at an even higher bandwidth.
