<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just kind of thought we\u2019d come for preseason, you know, give us something to do. And then we ended up enjoying it,\u201d he said, speaking about himself and his Fortnite teammate. They will both be at the state competition in March.<\/span><\/p>\n They have fun playing the game and whatever happens, happens, Tolbers said, but they still like to win. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI never really played a game in front of a crowd before, so it\u2019s going to be weird,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, I can kind of relate to football, I guess, but it\u2019ll be different for me for sure. But I\u2019m excited and looking forward to it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Another student, Kendal Clarey, has been on the team all three years the program has existed. She is currently the captain for the varsity Marvel Rivals team that will go to the upcoming competition.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always really enjoyed video games. Some of my earliest memories are of watching my dad play Skyward Sword in our den,\u201d Clarey said. \u201cSo when I heard that they\u2019re doing this competitively, like I should give that a shot.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to Marvel Rivals, Clarey has also played Super Smash Bros, Rocket League and League of Legends.<\/span><\/p>\n She said being able to advance to the state competition has been very exciting for both her and her entire team. <\/span><\/p>\n One challenge during the competition is that one of her team members will be in New York for the high school orchestra trip that day, so he will not be able to compete with the rest of the esports team.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest thing we\u2019re working on right now is to try to slot somebody into that position with three weeks before the state tournament,\u201d Pagel said. \u201cBasically, putting a new person in there that has not been there that entire year is an extremely difficult task, so we\u2019re hoping that we\u2019re getting things figured out and that we\u2019re still fairly competitive at state.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to specific teams being selected for the state competition, Pagel said their broadcast team will also be recognized. <\/span><\/p>\n Albert Lea High School broadcasts live all of the games and has live commentary and player interviews, Pagel explained. The team submits the streams to be graded at the state level, and Albert Lea High School esports won first place out of all the submissions from Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming and earned a total of 38 out of 40 points. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat was a huge thing for us,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the broadcasters is Anderson DeBeau, who also participates in Tiger Vision and AlbertLeaLive. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s basically about talking and keeping people engaged during the livestreams, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe just kind of thought we\u2019d come for preseason, you know, give us something to do. And then we ended up enjoying it,\u201d he said, speaking about himself and his Fortnite teammate. They will both be at the state competition in March. They have fun playing the game and whatever happens, happens, Tolbers said, but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5024,4152,585,5025,4250,4139,2681,542],"class_list":{"0":"post-5128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-esports","8":"tag-albert","9":"tag-competition","10":"tag-esports","11":"tag-lea","12":"tag-prepare","13":"tag-state","14":"tag-teams","15":"tag-upcoming"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}