The idea for the league began after students within the school were challenging each other online, then eventually brought their friends from other schools into the fold. Over the last two years it’s expanded to involve 11 high schools with 14 teams.

“We could see that this was growing, that it was an area of interest that kids were really connecting to,” said Cameron.

The school decided on the game League of Legends, a multi-player online battle game that’s popular with high school students and easy to play as team.

“It’s fun, it’s a cool after-school activity you get to do with some friends,” said 16-year-old Kaiden Roach.

“I saw it as a chance to get to know people, because we’re all students from different schools.”

Students at the LRATC come from a variety of high schools to take vocational training while completing their high school diplomas.

Competitive video game playing, also known as esports, is now a high school varsity sport in eight states.

It began with Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island in the fall of 2018. A few months later, the National Federation of State High School Associations said Alabama, Mississippi and Texas Charter schools have joined the mix.

CNN was recently invited to see to a competition in Georgia between North Atlanta High School and Grady High School, also in Atlanta, at the city’s newest esports arena. The venue opened in February as part of the Johnson STEM Activity Center.

The esports millionaires club is an exclusive bunch. Very few players have crossed the threshold. In fact a total of 68 players have made the club to date. One game has contributed 89% of millionaire club entrants. Or maybe you can attribute this to one event.

Valve’s The International has created 61 millionaires in esports. We say ‘Valve’, but in reality the community created them, Valve just enabled it to happen. Now, we say “richest” players, but this is based entirely on prize earnings – we do not take into account salary, endorsements, or any other form of supplementary income.

Popular and long-running TV series The Simpson saw something pretty interesting this last Sunday. Bart Simpson, bratty son of Homer Simpson, got into esports! Specifically, he got so good he managed to be in competitions (along with some other recurring characters).

Yesterday, Google announced plans for a new game-streaming service called Stadia. Besides the logo, the controller, and a single game — Doom Eternal — the announcement left us with more questions than answers. Primary in my mind has been the query of why Google needs to be in the gaming business at all. Isn’t it enough to dominate web search, ads, and browsers, smartphone operating systems, and maps? What part of our lives does Google not want to know about? And then it dawned on me that we might be looking at it from the wrong perspective: what if Stadia isn’t a case of Google aggressively entering a new business sphere, but rather a defensive one to protect its existing kingdom?

College scholarships, six-figure average salaries and houses in Los Angeles with personal chefs, nutritionists and more at the ready. And training – hours and hours of training.

Player Xmithie (pronounced “ex-myth-ie”), for example, practices Tuesday through Friday with games and tournaments on the weekend during the regular season and playoffs. Days start around 9:30 a.m., team meetings are around 10 a.m. with practices and scrimmages from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. His day typically ends around midnight.

This is the lifestyle of a professional athlete.