The NCEL is in agreement with the mission, vision, and values of the North America Scholastic Esports Federation with a unique focus on bringing esports and related educational opportunities to students in rural California.

The word ‘esports’ is the shortened version of electronic sports and is used to describe competitive video gameplay between teams of individual players.  Popular game titles include League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, NBA-Y2K, and Overwatch.  Comparable to participation in traditional athletic endeavors, esports captures the inherent benefits of team and community while engaged in an activity that naturally stimulates neuro and cognitive developments.

The Northern California Esports League (NCEL) and NCEL-Middle School (MS) are orchestrated under the auspices of the Butte County Office of Education’s Division of Statewide and Local Support Services.  Our mission is to use esports as a platform for ALL students to acquire critical communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills that enable life-long learning as well as workplace and civic literacy.  Partnered with the North American Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) as the very first program affiliate, the NCEL provides an array of programs, tools, and services to our predominantly rural and small school league members to enable program start-up and growth on their campuses.  The NCEL-MS is the first middle-school league in operation nationally and hosts teams across the Western U.S. in Rocket League, Smash Bros., and Mario Kart.  As evangelists for the whole esports ecosystem and career ladder the NCEL is uniquely positioned to assist our members in connecting life-transforming learning experiences and a cutting-edge curriculum to our competitive endeavors.  We are committed to meeting students “where they’re at” and seek to leverage the esports phenomena as a means to accelerate and incentivize learning.