Return to site

HBCUs Move to Educate Students in the Growing Esports Field

broken image

Keith Clinkscales is a former ESPN producer who now leads the sports news organization Shadow League Digital (SLD). Under the direction of Keith Clinkscales, SLD combines sports reporting with cultural viewpoints of interest to the African-American community.

Found on the web at TheShadowLeague.com, SLD frequently covers sports news at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in addition to professional leagues. SLD recently reported on HBCUs increasingly expanding their curriculum to include esports to ensure that black students are competitive in the growing industry.

Competitions played entirely online, esports has spread to HBCU institutions such as Marquette University, which is the first “Power 5” school to offer an esports team among its varsity sports offerings. Another HBCU, Hampton University, recently won a $340,000 technology grant from the Department of Homeland Security to develop an esports lab to support student learning in the emerging field.
Expected to open in the summer of 2020, the Hampton esports lab will be equipped with televisions, computers, and video games to allow students to improve their competitive game-playing skills.