There are a number of things listed on our “Funded Grants” page that sometimes give people pause. The rock climbing club, the fly fishing club, and esports are just a few.
Are these really things the Foundation should be funding? That’s a great question.
Here’s an imperfect answer: sometimes.
See, sometimes what the Foundation is funding isn’t the thing itself; it’s access to the thing. The high school was already going to have a rock climbing club, we just funded it so more students could go. There was already going to be a fly fishing club at Wealthy, we just funded it so more students could participate. And there has been an esports club at the high school since 2018, we just funded a grant to help make it more fair.
esports, it turns out, is a lot like golf. In golf, if you have a driver with a titanium club face and a graphite shaft, you’re going to have an advantage over a player with equal ability using an old persimmon driver with a hickory shaft (even though they’ll get you on style points). In esports, if you have a better controller, you have an edge.
So last fall, when Kurtis Lehman asked for a grant for $2,313.74 to purchase new equipment for the esports club, our board funded it not because we wanted kids to play video games, but because if you’re going to have students compete, you want that competition to be fair.
And, to be fair, the esports program at the high school is very much a work in progress. There are other schools in Michigan where esports has really taken off. It hasn’t done that here, yet, and maybe it never will. We’ll keep an eye on it. We want to provide our students with all the opportunities we can, but if groups like esports don’t thrive and grow, at some point, for funding anyway, it will be game over.
