Lone Tree

At the first Lone Tree school board meeting of 2024, the board met with the Esports team alongside parents for a boisterous public comment which lasted longer than the allotted 30 minutes.

The board knew the club would be at this meeting, as foretold by Principal Andrew Koshatka.

However, the board could not create a dialogue during public comment and did not hold further discussion about Esports after the public comment concluded.

The Esports club attended this meeting to discuss issues the board has with Esports. They do not like that Esports has disrupted traditional sports in the past. They also recently disallowed games they perceive as violent. This included a game titled ‘Valorant’ which the Esports club lobbied to have included in competition.

The first parent to speak at public comment, Nancy Waldschmidt, referenced a Stanford study which states that there is “no causal link between violence and video games.” She went on to state the benefits of Esports, which would be a common theme in public comment. Some of these positives include potential scholarships, social interaction and improvement in mental health/depression.

Waldschmidt went on to state that it is an “advantage” for students to participate in multiple activities at Lone Tree since it is a small school, saying it is much harder to do at a bigger school.

Waldschmidt concluded her time by saying, “It is narrow minded to assume that all students wish to participate in traditional sports; I think if you take away the benefits, you take away the benefit of the small school by saying ‘choose one extracurricular’ [when] some of those extracurriculars actually advance their opportunities.”

It is important to note that the school board never stated they want to eliminate Esports. They only voiced concerns.

Esports: Scheduling error

Esports is not allowed to practice at school to avoid disruption of traditional sports. This means the Esports team needed to adapt.

Parents and students described how the Esports team worked around these scheduling conflicts.

The team scouts other teams, watches their films to find weaknesses, receives coaching, and works together, like any other sport.

Without a dedicated practice time, the team still managed to do well, making it to state every season they’ve rostered a team. However, it does make for tough scenarios as all of their practice and preparation is done late at night.

“There wasn’t an easy time to ever tell someone else [about what was scouted]. I’d have to do it two minutes before the match starts or mid-match. There’s no time for us to actually talk and prepare like it is in other sports,” William Rockafellow, an Esports athlete, said.

Esports: Valorant demonstration

As previously stated, Valorant was recently banned from competition by the school board, deemed too violent.

Nick Bowman, a member of Esports and former captain of Valorant, presented a slideshow about the game.

His slideshow demonstrated the cartoon violence of Valorant, a non-realistic game. It features ways to turn off blood, different skins for guns to take them out of the game and more. Bowman also stated the game is rated T for Teens, which all of the Esport members are.

Those facts, alongside a months-long search to make a team, were his argument for why the board should reconsider their ban of Valorant, allowing Lone Tree to roster a team for the upcoming season.

Esports: The end

Another speaker, Tanya Judge, brought up a key aspect of Esports: the athletes must keep their grades up if they want to participate, just like any other sport.

This means that any claim that video games harm grades is challenged immediately.

Another common theme brought up by the parents in the room was how Esports helped their child overcome social anxiety.

Mike Bowman, a parent, had this to say: “If you’d seen [my son] three years ago when this wasn’t going on, he was the kid with the hoodie, he didn’t have any interaction with hardly anyone,” Bowman said. “This kid came out of his shell.”

Parents and students alike showed the positive impact Esports has on the participants, pleading their case to allow Esports to continue paving the way for small school Esport programs.

This was best described by Jessica Howard, the Esports coach.

“Today, I had another school reach out to me, again asking, ‘How do you set up your team? How does it work? How do you balance it between all the other sports?’” Howard said. “Five minutes later, I was asked by one of the executive team members for the Iowa State High School Resource Association to be a mentor for a new program that's starting up so that their coach can have someone to talk to and work with.”

“We work together; there is a code of conduct; parents sign a permission slip; you don’t go into the Esports room during competition time unless your paperwork is signed. I try to hold them to very high, rigorous standards,” Howard said.

Afterwards, parents and students thanked Howard for her hard work and dedication to the program, allowing it to blossom.

In turn, the participants were thanked by the board for their participation. The board did not speak further about Esports but will likely discuss it at future meetings.

New school website

On Monday, Jan. 8, Lone Tree rolled out the school’s new website. It can be found at www.lone-tree.k12.ia.us. The old link will re-direct people to the new site for the time being.

Superintendent Tyler Hotz was excited to announce this new site as this has been an agenda item for Lone Tree for almost a full year, before Hotz became superintendent.

The site is cohesive, featuring a constant rotation of updated photos; streamlined access to board minutes and agendas; the school’s mission, vision and goals; activities calendar; breakfast/lunch menu; announcements and more.

4-day calendar

Although the 4-day calendar was on the agenda, the biggest update to that came at the Lone Tree City Council meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 2, where Hotz announced that the school board hopes to vote on the calendar by March, meaning they’ll finalize the calendar before then. They are paying attention to data Hotz continues to collect, which shows that the majority of students, staff and parents support the change.

Next meeting: The Lone Tree School Board will meet again on Wednesday, Jan. 17, at 6:30 p.m. in the school library.