On the third of March, Hi-Rez Studios announced that it would be introducing a High School League through HSL (High School Star League). HSL has over 7,000 schools in its system and it organizes competitions for League of Legends, Overwatch, DOTA 2, Hearthstone, osu!, CS:GO, and now Smite and Paladins. According to the announcement, the primary reason for the partnership was to help promote and grow the amateur scene in Smite.

For their first Smite tournament, the HSL has a $5,000 prize pool. The teams will compete for this over the course of five weeks with two weeks for play offs and one week for the finals.

The deadline for signups is March 19th, and this announcement has created excitement in a niche part of the Arrowhead community.

Ben Fraser (Smite Player/AHS Student) had this to say about the prospects of having a Smite team at Arrowhead “[My team and I] are in full prep mode. We’ve started having serious practice matches and have spent the last few days making spreadsheets for organizing picks and bans and god pools.”

Devin Post had this to say about how prepared he felt “I mean it’s good experience, it’s probably good for a team vs. team situation. We still need to find a solo laner before the season starts though.”

So judging by the hype and the amount of prep that the Smite community of Arrowhead is doing, it looks like the chances of Arrowhead getting a Smite team is very high. This is a pretty big step, because in previous years while Arrowhead had other teams, people who played Smite couldn’t make teams because Arrowhead used the HSL to make teams. But now that the HSL supports Smite those who had to be denied can now have their team.