The Extension Campus hosted its first seasonal Spring Social to bring the community together at the extension, chemistry teacher Steven Martinez said.
There were video game systems, TVs, gaming PC setups, racing simulators, Nintendo Switch room, and food setup for anyone to take part in. There was also a burger food stand from a San Jose restaurant Dough Burger set up outside. The event was held in the E-sports room with 3 rooms to divide the gaming PC setups, simulators, and the Nintendo room with roughly 50-60 people playing games together in separate rooms.
The spring social was primarily to raise publicity about the MHS Innovation Extension E-sports program, Martinez said.
“The biggest issue is that the E-sports infrastructure is set at the Innovation Campus, so there is that disconnect between Innovation and the main, but we’ve tried to do a lot of work to advertise our Discord server to advertise our events like this,” Martinez said. “It becomes word of mouth, where students from Main (campus) come here, they see how cool the event is, and they invite their friends, they tell more people about it, and that’s ultimately the goal for it to be something that is both for both campuses equally.”
The event was massively popular due to the large number of people present, which shattered expectations, Martinez said.
“I like to make it a point to have students register for the event. So, I made a Google form, asked what they’re interested in, and we got about 60 kids who confirmed whether they were registered,” he said.
The event was open to anyone who wanted to play video games in a professional setting, Martinez said.
“This event’s open to everybody, from Main (Campus) to Innovation to Calaveras Hills, even junior high students,” Martinez said.
Students primarily led the event in the E-sports program, communal manager Ajay Xiong said. The social event is going to become a seasonal event for the E-sports program, he said.
“A lot of stuff is gonna change. I think we are going to put some more budget into this (event),” Xiong said. “We want some music playing. It feels very kind of silent, and I think we would also like more variety of games to play.”
Dough Burger was the chosen caterer for the event; the owner of the store was a Calaveras Hills High School alumnus, Martinez said.
“The first person that signed up got a free meal, so they get everything covered, and then every 10th person gets a free burger, and that’s all covered by the program,” Martinez said. “ (It was) to encourage more people to sign up, and on top of that, reward people even just wanting to be involved.”
Since the entire theme was about e-sports, there were games out to play everywhere, Martinez said there was a Mario Kart tournament, open PC gaming, PS5 and Switch open play, Martinez added.
“We have Mario Kart, we have Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, we have Gran Turismo open, we have Wii Sports, we’ve got Street Fighter 6, we’ve got Madden, we’ve got Rocket League, and then that extends to our PC room, where people can play a number of games. They could be in there playing Valorant, they could play Fortnite, Marvel Rivals – whatever appeals to them,” he said.
There was also a raffle held with participants able to win multiple tech-related prizes to encourage people to stay throughout the event, Xiong said.
“We’re raffling two power banks, one mouse pad, and one headset,” Xiong said. “And then, for the end of the event, we’re going to be giving away a Snorlax (squishmallow), a microphone, a keyboard, and a G 502 mouse,” Xiong said.
The event also aimed to convince people to join future e-sport events, freshman Eric Hom said.
“We have monthly LAN,” he said. “We have monthly tournaments every month on the last Friday, and in that you can participate in a Smash tournament or a Valorant tournament,” he said.
Sophomore Cole Long attends the main campus, and even though he is not part of the E-sports program, he would recommend people come to future social events.
“It’s really fun,” Long said “I’ve gotten the opportunity to look at a lot of cool new equipment I’ve never seen. I got to play some games, meet some new people.”
