Help E-Sports Level-Up!

St. Pius X - St. Matthias Academy (PMA) is a co-educational college-preparatory school in Downey, CA, serving approximately 600 students from South and Southeast Los Angeles. PMA promises its students a university-level educational experience, which is brought out by its range of extracurricular programs, rigorous academic offerings, opportunities to earn college credit, and a supportive faculty and staff who make it possible for students to seize all of these opportunities to learn and grow.

We are reaching out on behalf of PMA’s E-Sports Team, who will be hosting a Grandparents Day Fundraiser this year on November 14th from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM. This will be a fun day on campus consisting of Opportunity Drawings for themed baskets, a shared meal with grandparents, and speeches from students who have grown with this program and want to share why they love it and how you can support.

The E-Sports team at PMA is entering its 3rd year of competitive online gaming. While competitive gaming has been around since the early 70s, it is fairly new to high schools, only becoming recognized by CIF in 2020. The students play against other schools in League of Legends, Rocket League, Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart 8, NBA 2k, and Madden 25. About 30 students practice daily in the E-Sports Arena and have 7 Matches every week of their season.

There are a number of benefits to E-Sports.

1. Advancement: There are college teams, scholarships, and avenues to pursue gaming on the professional level.

2. Community: E-Sports also creates a space for students who typically would find their community online rather than in school. According to a study published by the High School E-Sports League, 82% of surveyed students who participated in E-Sports reported that it was their first time joining any school-sponsored activity. This incentivizes students to maintain their GPAs so they can continue to play and be a reliable teammate, and adds extrinsic motivation to their studies.

3. Safety & Character: Data suggests that 90% of US adolescents play video games and 72% of teens actively play video games outside of school. These online spaces can often turn into toxic spaces with little to no personal accountability. Instead of learning these negative behaviors and attitudes in a low-accountability environment, E-Sports can be a way for institutions to model good behaviors online, such as sportsmanship, tolerance, teamwork, and respectful discourse- hopefully creating a safer media environment for the future.

E-Sports takes something that young people already love, video games, and gives students a way to build a real community around it while advancing their skills. E-Sports helps gamers feel more connected to and valued by their school!

The team will be fundraising for gaming computers, broadcasting equipment, consoles, accessories, game downloads/cards, uniforms, and tournament fees to help make the sport more accessible. We hope you will choose to support this fundraiser and help E-Sports Level-Up!