<\/p>\n
Gamers from across northwest Pennsylvania packed into PennWest Edinboro today for a high\u2011energy esports tournament with a career\u2011ready twist \u2014 and one student discovered a whole new future behind the controller.<\/p>\n
Natural sound<\/p>\n
More than 160 students locked into Rocket League and Smash Bros. battles as the esports tournament filled the PennWest Edinboro student center.<\/p>\n
But for one middle schooler, today was about more than winning a match.<\/p>\n
Sam came here ready to compete \u2014 but left thinking about his future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019d be really cool to actually have this as a job one day and be a community leader and really work toward this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between gaming rounds, Sam and other students explored STEM programs and met PennWest\u2019s collegiate esports players.<\/p>\n
Seeing students who once sat where he is now made the idea of a career in tech, design, or production feel real.<\/p>\n
And while he described the competition as fierce, the biggest win was discovering a path.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are prepared to have some competitive matches and stuff, but we feel we can play top 10 and do really good today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gamers from across northwest Pennsylvania packed into PennWest Edinboro today for a high\u2011energy esports tournament with a career\u2011ready twist \u2014 and one student discovered a whole new future behind the controller. Natural sound More than 160 students locked into Rocket League and Smash Bros. battles as the esports tournament filled the PennWest Edinboro student center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5319,585,1143,5320,4521,5318,493],"class_list":{"0":"post-5379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-esports","8":"tag-compete","9":"tag-esports","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-nwpa","12":"tag-spot","13":"tag-students","14":"tag-top"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379","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=5379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}