Quinton Tate has been playing video games his whole life, and he doesn’t plan to stop any time soon.
“I always made the joke that I’m going to be a 70-year-old grandad with a controller in my hand,” Tate said.
The history teacher at Noxubee County High School has measured out his life in gaming consoles. He grew up in Macon on a RadioShack system hooked up to his TV. From there, it was the Nintendo Entertainment System, then the Sega Genesis. In high school, Tate got his own Sony PlayStation.
And when he started out at Mississippi State in fall 2001, his gaming hobby took off.
“I got to college and it got that much more intensified because I met people who were like minded and had the same passion for it that I did,” Tate said.
Since 2019, Tate has given students at his alma mater that same type of community — one he never had the chance to experience in high school.
That year, he started the esports club — and competitive gaming team — at Noxubee County High.
“It’s just a great opportunity for the kids, and I love giving them that chance,” Tate said.
‘Let’s have some fun’
The school’s esports club currently includes more than 30 members, while the team features 17 students. Boys and girls are both represented.
Noxubee County competes in Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. — both of which are sponsored by the Mississippi High School Activities Association — as well as Madden football, NBA 2K and Mario Kart.
Despite having access to newer consoles like the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 4 to compete, students enjoy older technology, too — like the Nintendo Wii donated by NCSD superintendent Washington Cole IV.
“A lot of the kids that show up, while they like playing the PS4 and the newer systems, a lot of them got excited when they saw some of the older systems I have in there for just club days,” Tate said.
Tate has tried everything under the sun — he plays Mario Kart with his son on the Switch — but plenty of his students can outflank the master.
Tate said he challenged a handful of club members to a recent Super Smash Bros. match and was promptly humbled, coming in third, solidly middle of the pack.
“Every now and then, everybody wants to take a shot at Mr. Tate,” he said. “There are kids who can straight up bum-rush me in Smash. It’s always fun to compete with the kids and have fun with them. At the end of the day, we want to be successful. We want to win. That’s the ultimate goal, but let’s have some fun.”
Breaking down barriers
Finding the money to compete in esports in one of the poorer counties in the nation’s poorest state hasn’t always been easy.
In a GoFundMe started ahead of the spring 2021 esports season, Tate explained the gaming team’s budget wasn’t approved, and the Tigers couldn’t afford the registration fee or the cost of games and services.
Still, the show has gone on.
Tate’s friends and coworkers have helped contribute, and he said athletic director Karen Dixon and principal Aiesha Brooks have been supportive.
PlayVS, the online platform that hosts matches, has also helped, including with discounts for girls competing and different options for Title I (low-income) schools like Noxubee County.
“There are some barriers, but we have so much support that we pretty much knocked them down when they would get in our way,” Tate said.
Tate has also put his own time and money into making sure his students can compete. In December, with the help of GameStop, he held a raffle with four different items: a Mario Kart gift set and gift baskets for PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
Tate said he put plenty of thought into what would go in each basket, and he was happy to see his work pay off: The winning students showed off their wares to their classmates, cheerful and excited.
“It felt great for them to see that and just go, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’” Tate said. “Especially coming around Christmastime, a lot of people were like, ‘Well, this saves me a gift to buy.’”
A bigger purpose
Whether it’s weekly matches for school-level “champions” to defend their titles in randomly selected games or Tate taking on his students and losing, gaming is certainly fun at Noxubee County.
But Tate, a U.S. history instructor and the school’s “lead teacher” — a conduit between teachers and administration — knows there’s a bigger purpose.
At one club meeting, he set up a video call between students and 2007 Noxubee County graduate Joseph Coleman, now an animator for the independent video game developer Studio MDHR.
Coleman lives in Los Angeles now, and the animations he posts on Twitter routinely receive retweets and likes in the thousands.
Coleman graduated long before the club was formed, but to Tate, he’s a success story.
“I just wanted the kids to know you can do what you love and still be successful,” Tate said. “You don’t have to stop doing what you love just because ‘I’m too old for gaming or I should give it up.’”
It hasn’t happened yet, but Tate maintains his biggest goal is to help at least one student earn an esports scholarship in some capacity.
He said he plans to reach out to colleges who field esports teams and put together video packages to highlight his players’ skills.
The message? “Hey, we’ve got kids here who play, too.”
“We’re just going to keep trying and see if we can get it,” Tate said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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