Host Mustangs will have 12 students competing for state championships in Rocket League, Smash Brothers Crew Battle and Mario Kart 

EVERGREEN PARK, IL — Evergreen Park Community High School will be the site for the IHSA state eSports finals for the second year in a row, but this time, the host school will have a dozen students participating in various video gaming events with the hopes of keeping state championship trophies in the same building they will be presented this Saturday. 

EPCHS is sending three eSports teams to the state finals set for Saturday, April 27, in the school’s award-winning Learning Resource Center. The tournament will start at 9 a.m. and will last several hours until all champions have been crowned. 

Both the school’s Rocket League and Smash Brothers Crew Battle teams took first place in their respective events at last weekend’s sectional finals held at DePaul University. The Rocket League Mustangs are led by Damian Torres, Lukas Spain and Diego Cruz-Fernandez. The Smash Brothers Crew battle squad consists of Quenton Talbott, Brendan Holmes, Michael Noel, Cesar Ortiz and Alex Carmody. 

EPCHS’ Mario Kart team of Vanessa Paterson, Heather Paterson, Mario Jackson and Jack Schaller took second place at the DePaul sectional, also earning a bid to compete in the state finals at home. 

The combined efforts of the Mustang eSports teams led to Evergreen Park winning the sectional championship as a team. 

“All the hard work our eSports team has put in this year paid off,” said Dan Truffa, an EPCHS English teacher who serves as the faculty sponsor for the school’s eSports activity. “We are looking forward to continuing our success in the state final!” 

The dozen EPCHS competitors will be among 224 high school students participating at the state final. In all, 57 schools from across the state will be represented. A full list of eSports state final individual competitors has been compiled by the Peoria Journal Star newspaper. 

“We are extremely proud of our eSports program for winning the sectional championship, and honored to host the IHSA eSports state championship for the second consecutive year,” EPCHS Superintendent Tom O’Malley said. 

It’s the second consecutive year in which EPCHS has hosted the eSports state finals, a relatively new event sanctioned by the IHSA in its third year overall.