Amitav Kohli leads Glenelg's e-sports Club to top nationwide ranking

By: Riley Suszkiw and Aidan Vogts

It’s not every day a freshman leads his team, and Glenelg High School, to a number 1 ranking out of 7,000 nationwide high schools.

But that’s exactly what Amitav Kohli has done.

Kohli is the head of the Glenelg E-sports Club. When Kohli was a seventh grader at Glenwood Middle School he began playing video games, mainly because of the COVID-19 lockdown. He became passionate about it and started a club with some friends.

​When he started the E-sports Club in seventh grade it was small. Today, Kohli is shocked to see the sheer number of students in the club.

“I only thought it would be around 10-13 kids, but it has grown to around 60,” Kohli said. 

It is a total only outnumbered by Glenelg’s Key Club. 

The club’s members also all play games on their own, but competitively they play Minecraft, Valorant, Rocket League, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. The club is ranked number one in Minecraft, more specifically a mode called “Hunger Games,” based off of the book series. 

Kohli started the club with the Minecraft team.

“I am most proud of the Minecraft team for maintaining number one in the country,” Kohli said. The Minecraft team is why the E-sports Club was originally started, but other teams have risen in success.

Kohli said he is not surprised about his team’s ranking.

“I was not surprised at all. We practiced as a team on Saturdays. I feel that helped a lot” he said.  

Staying number one is important to the team, and Kohli knows that if they want to remain on top, he said they have to “change our strategy every time.”

The Minecraft team has always performed the best of all the teams. However, the Valorant team has a promising future, especially considering the possibility of getting scholarship money.

“Making it to nationals for our Valorant team is a goal of ours,” Kohli said. “We can possibly get scholarship money from different schools. That is an exciting future!”

The goal for the club is to be invited to a tournament in Texas. Colleges attend this tournament, and scholarship opportunities are available from colleges across the country. Some members of the E-sports Club would like to continue with this as a career; for others, like Kohli, this may just be a way to get a scholarship for college.

Kohli has high hopes for the future of the E-sports Club, and even higher expectations. He encourages anyone who plays competitive video games to join the E-sports Club. 

You can expect nothing but the best for the future of the E-sports Club.