Fossil Ridge’s Esports Fortnite team left off on an amazing season, winning their second Colorado state championship. Seniors Gabe Alfrey and William Agnew dominated, finishing undefeated. If PlayVS had chosen Fortnite for one of the national championship games played this year, Fossil Ridge would have qualified.
Unfortunately, Fortnite was soon after banned from being played in Fossil Esports, leaving both students involved and their coach upset and disappointed.
“I’m seeing students interacting with others, and finding a community that was built through both of those games was awesome.” Fossil Ridge Esports Coach Brian Besel says, “And so knowing that I was going to lose that, I was really upset.”
Gabe Afrey also expresses his disappointment.
“It feels like it was the first time we won, I felt so accomplished and excited for the future ahead, and then when I found out, it felt like that was stripped away from me,” Afrey said.
Coach Besel went to multiple conferences to try to repeal the ban, but to no avail; there is little hope for Fortnite to return to the future of fossil esports.
In Colorado, there has been a long history of school violence since 1999, is something we can’t escape from, and as a result, the district has placed a ban on games involving guns in concern that it may be triggering violence or set a bad precedent.
“I don’t think video games cause violence-” Besel explains. “Many of these students would be stuck inside, isolated; this finally gave them a chance to find a community and make friends.”
Many of Fossil’s gaming community play games with violence, whether it’s Fortnite, Valorant, Call of Duty, or the hundreds of other gun-related games. This ban significantly limits the esports community to games people are less likely to play, mario cart, league of legends, etc. As time goes on, will we see a rise or decline with school ESport teams as a whole with limited games and opportunities?
“I personally love Fortnite, full boxing kids, 360 no scope, getting wins for the OG’s. It’s all really fun stuff. I was personally thinking about participating in a school club/team for the first time, but when I found out it was banned, I was really disappointed. Maybe one day we will live in a time where things will be different, and we won’t have to think about things like that,” Quinn Howard, a Fossil student, shared.