Shortly after they get home from school, and long before they even think about getting homework done, they are sitting at their computers with headsets on and fingers flying across the keyboard as they battle other gamers playing in the online battle arena League of Legends.

Freshmen Ian Fines, Garrett Speer and Nathan Stone are in the process of starting a new video games club at school. This club would be centered around the game League of Legends, which has 32 million players worldwide, some of whom play on professional teams. The founders chose math teacher Neal Doolin to be their adviser because he is a fellow gamer who has played League of Legends for over three years and played on the KU team when he was in college. He is currently encouraging founding members to be responsible for starting the club independently to teach them leadership skills.

“At this point I want the club to be their baby,” Doolin said. “In other words, I’m having them make all the decisions and do the paperwork.”

However, some members expressed concerns that being an underclassman could hurt the club’s chances of really taking off.

“It will be harder for us to start a club because we have less credit for one thing, and because we haven’t done much involving the school,” Fines said.

The club is also facing additional start up challenges. League of Legends is rated T for mild violence and requires that gamers download software onto their computers before playing, meaning that the district has to approve of the game before members can play at school.

“I am almost positive that I will be able to get the club up and running,”Speer said. “Even if we couldn’t play the game it is considered an e-sport so we could just watch [professionals play]instead.”

If the game gets approved, members plan on putting up posters and telling other gamers about the formation of the club.  Their goal is to have a least ten members so that there can be two teams of five players, guys or girls, newcomers or seasoned pros.

“I’d like to see even girls get involved so that they don’t think that video games are so nerdy and they realize that they’re actually fun,” Stone said. “And we’ve got some insanely good players at the school, so it gives people a chance that are new at the game to find experts to help them get better.”