There’s a new state champion on top of the Iowa High School Esports mountain and it’s in the form of a Ram.

The Greene County High School Esports Spring Smite Team won the Iowa High School Esports Association State Playoffs on Thursday. The Rams entered the top eight team tournament with a 6-1 record. In the best of three match rounds, Greene County swept West Delaware in the opening round, beat Roland-Story, who was last year’s state champion and the Rams only regular season loss, 2-1; and then took down Iowa Falls-Alden in the championship match 2-0. 

Coach Kyle Kinne has really enjoyed this season and is proud that Esports is an activity that any student can join, with the only cost being purchasing a jersey, otherwise everything else is paid for. He is grateful for the support from the school district to get Esports up and running two years ago.

“I appreciate with the (Greene County) School Board allowing them to do this and administration. It wasn’t cheap to put all this stuff together. So I appreciate that. A little known fact I guess that most people don’t know, we just got four more new (Esports) computers. Our students, not our Esports kids, but our computer science strain, as far as our computer hardware, puts those together.”    

The coaches for all three seasons of Esports includes Kinne, along with the spring season coach with Conner Mueller, the winter season coach with Bob Palmer, the fall season coach with Josef Miller, and Brent Gerzema also helps throughout the year.