Butte County Office of Education

The NCEL is in agreement with the mission, vision, and values of the North America Scholastic Esports Federation with a unique focus on bringing esports and related educational opportunities to students in rural California.

The word ‘esports’ is the shortened version of electronic sports and is used to describe competitive video gameplay between teams of individual players.  Popular game titles include League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, NBA-Y2K, and Overwatch.  Comparable to participation in traditional athletic endeavors, esports captures the inherent benefits of team and community while engaged in an activity that naturally stimulates neuro and cognitive developments.  

The Northern California Esports League (NCEL) and NCEL-Middle School (MS) are orchestrated under the auspices of the Butte County Office of Education’s Division of Statewide and Local Support Services.  Our mission is to use esports as a platform for ALL students to acquire critical communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills that enable life-long learning as well as workplace and civic literacy.  Partnered with the North American Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) as the very first program affiliate, the NCEL provides an array of programs, tools, and services to our predominantly rural and small school league members to enable program start-up and growth on their campuses.  The NCEL-MS is the first middle-school league in operation nationally and hosts teams across the Western U.S. in Rocket League, Smash Bros., and Mario Kart.  As evangelists for the whole esports ecosystem and career ladder the NCEL is uniquely positioned to assist our members in connecting life-transforming learning experiences and a cutting-edge curriculum to our competitive endeavors.  We are committed to meeting students “where they’re at” and seek to leverage the esports phenomena as a means to accelerate and incentivize learning.

We’re about more than just games and gaming!  The NCEL strives to provide opportunities to connect game experience to the skills needed to thrive in work and life.  We emphasize the “scholastic” in school-based esports as it holds an undeniable link to educational attainment.  Esports have been proven to increase GPAs and attendance rates in school as our teams and league offer a sense of connectedness and have proven to increase school engagement.  By forming a scholastic esports club on their campuses, schools find that their students are more invested in their education.  Teachers and administrators who are involved with NCEL programming share countless stories of student success where disengagement, social isolation, and poor school performance has been overcome. NCEL member clubs are seeing their athletes become better players and more importantly, better students with stronger career and life aspirations..  As science advances, the positive connection between learning and play becomes all the more undeniable. The integration of esports into the high school curriculum and sports clubs has quickly become the gold standard for interest-driven learning, the notion that students learn crucial academic and life skills best when engaged in activity geared toward students' genuine interests. BCOE is working to ensure all students not only thrive in their educational journeys but have fun along the way!

Register your club here! Each school site has to only submit a Single Registration but may submit multiple teams for the tournament. Please opt in to each tournament below, especially if different teams will have different managers/coaches

In order to complete each student must have a Parent Packet on file with us. Complete and submit them to James Wood at jwood@achievecharter.org

 

Rocket League will be cross-platform, PC, or Mac with wired controllers offer the best performance, but all consoles are eligible for use.

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (SSBU) will be played on the Nintendo Switch.

 

Please visit the NCEL League Spot website for more information. Registered teams will receive updates via email.

Interested in esports? Want to see esports on your campus? Whether you're a student, teacher, school administrator, aspiring esports coach, or just want to learn more, connect with NCEL! 

 

Visit the NCEL website or one of the NCEL social media pages: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Discord. 

 

 

Don't miss out on the global success of esports!