Asbury Park High School: Crossover event esports and history with Tina Watson

Asbury Park High School became partners with Garden State Esports during the 2024-2025 school year.

Asbury Park High School collaboration with Esports

Dr. Medina, High School Principal, along with Garden State Esports President Chris Aviles and Vice President Regina Schaffer established a curriculum which immersed students into the studies of gaming competition, teamwork, game creation, and careers in Esports.

Asbury Park High School Esports: Gameplan

Chris Aviles established part of the curriculum for the Asbury Park High School called Gameplan.

Gameplan enables students to engage in lessons that reveal to them that there is much more to gaming than just playing the game. Gameplan encompasses lessons on good health and nutrition, proper teamwork which involves proper attitude and will. Additionally, the functions of a game, which is built using software called Unreal Engine that is tied into Gameplan.

During this school year, 2025-2026, students at Asbury Park High School were not only using the Gameplan curriculum but also participating in gaming competition.

Students competed against other school districts in games such as

• Marvel Rivals
• Rocket League
• Street Fighter 6.

Now with an established program, the question was how to make it go further.

Using Gameplan’s lessons on teamwork, students learned how important it was to have a good attitude. Additionally, to share the load of the work especially playing as a team in Marvel Rivals.

Black History Month

The teamwork lesson was carried out even further during Black History Month. As in Marvel Rivals, many Black Americans used incredible teamwork throughout history. Gameplan’s lesson shfited from using teamwork in video games to real life.

Tuskegee Airmen

The best example of relating teamwork learned in Gameplan to reality was the Tuskegee Airmen. These men were the first Black American aviators in the U.S. Armed forces.

The students completed an assignment that taught them about the rich history of the Tuskegee Airmen and the teamwork the Airmen relied on to succeed on every mission.

This history lesson then segued into designing a video game based on their missions. For the video game project, students had to create three levels of play in which the Tuskegee Airmen had to protect the bombers, engage with enemy planes, and defeat the final evil boss.

Tina Watson, daughter to Tuskegee Airman George Watson

To really enhance this lesson, Tina Watson, the daughter to Tuskegee Airman George Watson, came to Asbury Park High School to give Careers in Esports class background information about the Tuskegee airmen’s history.

The lesson was filled with visuals and videos which enhanced the students’ video game creation. This teamwork lesson which started out using Marvel Rivals as an example then tying the lesson into a real-life scenarios of teamwork through the Tuskegee Airmen would forever be one of the greatest crossovers with Esports and history.