Playing Games with Their Futures: Ken Garff Esports’ SLCC Invitational Shows High School Competitors a Path to Higher Ed

 

With two NJCAA national titles in Hearthstone and several podium places in other games, Salt Lake Community College’s esports program typically makes news on a national scale. In December, the program made a more local impact by hosting regional high school students at the SLCC Invitational, the third tournament of Ken Garff Esports’ Invitational Series.

Each of the series’ tournaments are hosted by different institutions of higher ed around the state, including three universities (Utah Tech, Weber State, and Utah Valley) and SLCC, with the series culminating in March at the University of Utah with statewide playoffs.

Normally, the SLCC Invitational would only include Salt Lake County schools, but this edition was expanded to also include students from Utah County. In total, 24 high schools sent teams to compete in “Rocket League,” “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe,” “Super Smash Brothers Ultimate,” and a coding competition in which students compete using Python, HTML, and Scratch to program solutions to puzzles.

Corner Canyon High School won the Rocket League bracket, Cedar Valley High School took top honors in “Mario Kart” (and podiumed every other event), and Alta High School scored two golds – one in “Smash” and a second in the coding competition.

Those results matter, no doubt, but Jeff Sosa, director and head coach of SLCC’s well-fêted esports program, says an esports tournament is more than just an afternoon of gaming, programming, and competition.

“Esports is important because it helps you be a holistic person,” explained Sosa, crediting organized gaming’s role as an accessible, inclusive way for young adults to build social connections while transitioning into a more self-determined life in higher education. For Sosa, that impact goes beyond the social sphere to include the potential to create educational pathways – especially valuable for students who may be considering transferring from the Community College to one of Utah’s four-year schools.

“Every one of our four-year college partners have esports programs,” Sosa explained. “So it's, like, not just a club here and a team here, but it can transfer on with the student.” That continuity helps create a pathway to a four-year education while cultivating and preserving critical social connections.

That continuity and pathfinding are integral to the Invitational Series, which Ken Garff Esports bills as a way for students to find opportunities across the state in esports- and tech-related fields like Computer Science, Information Technology, and Digital Media.

At the SLCC Invitational, that mandate was reinforced by Kathy Garff, who represented Ken Garff Esports with remarks delivered to the attendees during the tournament’s lunch break. Garff explained how esports can help young students develop skillsets applicable beyond gaming, crediting esports as a venue for “practicing communication skills,” and “mastering technologies and strategies” for engaging with tech in academic and professional settings.

SLCC President Greg Peterson followed Garff on stage with a reminder of the importance of planning ahead for any education – especially in a tech-related field. Like Sosa, Peterson sees esports as a pathway to facilitate that planning, using the protean, ever-evolving field of AI as an example.

AI requires both education and constant engagement to maintain expertise, Peterson explained. And he would know. Before coming to SLCC, Peterson led Chandler-Gilbert Community College as it launched the nation’s first associate’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, which CGCC lauds as a catalyst for professional opportunities.

Now, Peterson sees esports as a promising gateway into that space of expertise.

While the SLCC Invitational’s speakers and hosts may have been focused on academic and professional development opportunities, the student competitors were focused on the competition itself. It was a tournament, after all. And in any competition, the quality of the field of play matters.

To ensure competitive fidelity, the organizers staged the tournament on Nintendo Switch hardware provided and operated by Spacestation Gaming, a local professional gaming company, and SLCC’s own complement of competition-tuned Dell monitors. The in-house monitors refresh the screen display 240 times per second for near-instant visual updates and less motion ghosting, enabling and rewarding precise control inputs and timings.

While they may not recognize the significance of the equipment, any casual observer at a competitive esports event can easily observe that the competitors operate well beyond the typical recreationalist’s expertise. During the SLCC Invitational, Peterson fell into that “casual observer” camp, admitting a general lack of experience when it comes to gaming and expressing a healthy respect for athletes like SLCC’s Owen Symes (Jelly), who earned the College’s second national title in “Hearthstone” last summer and was in attendance during the high school tournament.

But despite his inexperience, Peterson did come to the SLCC Invitational with some inadvertent background prep; he’d recently witnessed some younger family members play one of the games.

“I watched my nieces and nephews play Smash Brothers. It was overwhelming, there was so much going on,” he said, marveling at the ability of any gamer – from casual to competitive – to process and strategize amidst such chaos. He followed up with a layman’s summary of the action: “The seven-year-old was beating everyone up.”

With the help of organizations like Ken Garff Esports and events like the Invitational Series, esports is enjoying a meteoric rise in Utah, and the SLCC esports program even has scholarship opportunities. If that seven-year-old keeps honing her skills, then the ability to punch out virtual competitors may eventually punch her ticket to higher education.

Interested in gaming at SLCC? Check out the SLCC esports FAQ for details on how you can play – skill categories rank from tier 1 (the NJCAA varsity tier for players like Symes) to tier 3 (the casual, non-competitive tier). Students, faculty, and staff of all ability levels are welcome.

Would you rather just watch? Ken Garff Esports streams each competition in the Invitational Series on Twitch (ken_garff_esports) and YouTube (ken garff esports). You can see the schedule here.