The Redhawks esports team lost a lot of members coming into this year but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming a national power. With most of the esports team leaving due to academic and timing concerns at the end of last season, senior and high school esports league class president Jerry Bui had to find another solution.

“I had some people quit because they had to study for SAT and I wanted us to practice a lot and some people didn’t have the time and they had to leave the team,” Bui said. “When two people left, I said we have to make a new team. Mr. Ham allowed me to control the tryouts, so I reached out to everyone I knew, and I had a bunch of good players try out and out of that I selected seven to play on the main roster.”

The new team’s work, and massive success led to them becoming number one in the nation out of 600 teams, and getting a video made from the high school esports league account on Instagram, which has over 10,700 followers, gaining them national recognition.

“I was still pretty hyped when we were number one,” Bui said. “I was like holy- how did we get so far? We went from being 4-4 to now being 6-0, undefeated. They made a video over us and how we rebranded and restructured everything. In January we won the Frisco tourney and beat Lebanon Trail. I’m pretty happy with our success from start to finish last semester.”

With this possibly being this team’s last season playing under the supervision of Chris Ham, the sponsor of the esports club, they’re hoping to still be included in next year’s lineup of teams.

“The district itself is including classes so Mr. Ham doesn’t have the resources to really hold an esports class though the district does and it’s at the CTE Center,” Bui said. “We even have an esports class here. I’m hoping for us to still compete in tournaments and hopefully Frisco still reaches out to them. These guys have the best potential to be the best and possibly go pro, and they are my legacy and I place so much hope and pride into them. Every week I cheer for them no matter what.”