Nerd Street just launched a youth esports league

Nerd Street announced its new Nerd Street Youth League (NYSL) this month, providing an opportunity for youth to play on an esports team outside of the North Broad Street-based company’s summer camps.

Ben Beaver, senior manager of youth camps and programming at Nerd Street — which in March 2022 shortened its name from Nerd Street Gamers — said this new entity already hosts summer camps. A youth league was the natural next step in creating a pipeline for them to become amateur or professional esports players.

Esports doesn’t have a clear path the way traditional sports such as soccer or baseball do. It is more difficult to navigate the landscape and figure out how to become a professional in esports, said Beaver.

“NSYL gives them an outlet to compete in that game that they really love, and be part of a team and learn all those traditional values — and it’s just really good social skills, like how to be part of a team, how to problem solve, how to be leader,” he said.

This first season will take place nearby at the Philadelphia and Rowan University locations. This season is a 10-week program and the league meets once a week for 90 minutes. The season started on Oct. 2 and will run until Dec. 4. There is no required skill level to join the league, but the program is targeted at kids ages nine to 13.

The program starts with gaming warm-ups, stretches and learning about healthy gaming habits, then working on a challenge or competition as a team. All of the challenges will be in the game “Fortnite.”

The first session of the NSYL was the first week of October. Jumaani Haskins, a shift lead at Nerd Street, said the first session in Philly had five participants, two of whom are regulars at Nerd Street’s summer camps.

Haskins said the activity they did involved teaching the kids to go at their own pace and focus on what they can control in the game. He said the NSYL program is about giving kids early exposure to structured esports, especially if they haven’t played organized sports before.

“I’m looking forward to just seeing our students develop, improve their game sense, improve their skills within the games, but also just improving as players, as teammates and really as people,” said Haskins. “Communication, teamwork, cooperation — these are all things that you can transfer outside of the game in your professional life, your academic life, your hobbies and downtime.”

Right now, Nerd Street has one team at the Philly location, one team at Rowan University and one team that is associated with a school in northwest Philly. Beaver said the unique thing about esports is that all three teams can compete with each other without being in the same place at the same time, like with traditional sports.

In terms of recruiting team members, Beaver said a lot of the sign-ups came from families who had participated in previous Nerd Street camps or had been referred through a previous camper.

In addition to growing the league by getting more individual signups, Beaver said he hopes Nerd Street will continue growing its partnerships so that local schools, libraries and rec centers can start their own teams as part of the youth league.

Beaver also wants this league to help kids build confidence, especially those whose interests don’t align with traditional sports, the arts or specific subjects in school. He also hopes this camp will help young people develop life skills and navigate relationships in other parts of their lives.

“A lot of the campers that have come to us over the summers here, a lot of them love gaming or they’re more of a nerdy personality. And the cool thing is we’ve been able to give them a home where they feel they – like, we had a kid specifically say, ‘I found my community,’” Beaver said.

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.