Milpitas Unified School District

Team Liquid, OG, G2 Esports, FaZe Clan, Gen.G, Fnatic, Team Vitality, and T1 may not be household names to many outside of the gaming community. However, these professional Esports teams have earned tens of millions of dollars on the pro gaming circuits playing games such as Valorant, League of Legends, CS2, and Dota 2. These events mirror traditional sports, featuring professional and amateur players competing in front of global audiences. 

 

As many as 30 students gather three times weekly in the Esports Lab located at the MUSD Innovation Campus, where there are 24 high-end gaming PC computers, as well as monitors for gaming system hookups, in a dedicated space with sleek gaming chairs and high speed internet access.

 

“There is a lot of support here for what we do and I’m really excited about that,” said ESports team coach/advisor Steven Martinez, who continues to work with colleague Leandro Salcedo, a digital media teacher, and others on building the non-traditional sports program. “We are really starting to transform this into a sports program, where the kids who are here need to commit to practicing a few days a week and on our match days.”

 

Martinez, a first-year science teacher on campus and an avid gamer himself, “immediately wanted something to do with the e-Sports program,” which started to take shape at the start of the current 2025-26 school year. “This is [a pathway to career] that kids can do for their four years of high school,” he added. 

 

Juniors Finn Chadda, 17, and Ridhwan Zaman, 16, were two of four friends who first established the Milpitas HS eSports team for the game Valorant. Together as a team of 5, they have competed in California Interscholastic Federation’s (CIF) Network of Academic and Scholastic Esports Federations (NASEF) tournaments.

 

“We heard about the eSports lab when it was being built, so one night we hopped on a Discord call and discussed what if we started a club or eSports movement behind it,” Zaman explained.

 

They now compete against other school teams in California, and even notched a victory in this year’s ​​University of Silicon Valley (USV) High School Esports Challenge Cup. USV offers a range of esports scholarships for talented and driven players who want to turn their passion into a career.

 

Freshman Eric Hom, 14, is part of the Super Smash Bros. junior varsity team at the MHS Extension and plays on the Nintendo gaming system. “It’s been pretty fun. I’m just trying to get better before I start playing games in competitions,” he said. “I want to use this experience to help me get into college because I don’t play traditional sports.”

 

“With the gear and graciousness that MHS have given us, with very fast internet, and good computers, we have put our Valorant team on the map,” said Chadda, who believes the eSports team is key for “rising high school student gamers who want to get into e-sports as well as showcase their skills.”

 

Junior Long Nguyen, 16, illustrates two key career and life skills, “You need to take in feedback from other players, whether they are better than you or not, so you are always improving,” Nguyen said. The World Economic Forum identifies resilience and leadership as two key job skills for 2030 along with others that are incorporated in eSports dual enrollment for college credit as well as technical certifications for higher paying jobs in technology.

 

Martinez is making sure that MHS is on the right path to establishing a highly successful eSports program, which can lead to a myriad of pathways such as gaming design, live event production, and AI design. This aligns with our MUSD Strategic Goal #3: Design pathways that empower every learner - students and team members - to explore their passions and pursue future careers.

 

“The goal is to be up there with other [traditional sports] teams on campus,” said Martinez, who hopes to link the eSports program from the Extension to the MHS Main Campus with players from both. “We want incoming freshmen to come in, take a look at the program and say that’s something I want to do and it’s a legitimate path to take.”