These sports give new meaning to ‘faster, higher, stronger and together’

Students at West Milford High School in New Jersey can earn a varsity letter for playing esports - competitive video gaming involving teams, leagues and tournaments.

You can be a member of the crew team at Warwick Valley High School in New York or the bowling team at Newton High School in New Jersey and earn college scholarships in those two sports if you are accomplished enough.

Or you could play the Old World sport of bocce as part of the unified team of boys and girls at a varsity-level at Delaware Valley High School in Pike County, Pa.

While these are certainly non-traditional sports, the athletes who play them say their games are just as demanding physically and mentally.

And these sports give young people the chance to play competitively, to be teammates and to learn the universal lesson of how to accept defeat.

What follows is a look at some of these sports and the people who play and coach them.

West Milford High School esports

In May 2025, when the New Jersey School Boards Association recognized esports as a varsity caliber sport, it was put up to the discretion of local school boards if their district would have a team.

“We had just built the esports lab at Macopin Middle School so we gave (West Milford Township Public Schools Board of Education) members a tour and highlighted the different avenues esports can provide our students and the board approved,” said esports coach Thomas Santoro. “The athletic director and entire administration were supportive and what had been a club since 2022-23 was recognized as a varsity sport.”

Esports, short for electronic sports, is organized, competitive video gaming involving teams, leagues and tournaments emphasizing skill, strategy, teamwork, reflexes and game knowledge.

Garden State Esports is the sanctioned body that runs esports in New Jersey. It decides which games will be played during which season and ensures the games are appropriate.

A popular game is Overwatch, a team-based first-person shooter video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment with a 5 versus 5 format with heroes, maps, game modes, a story driven campaign and a battle pass/monetization system.

Jack Fleming is the team’s former captain after graduating this year. A state all-star his senior season, Fleming was integral in building the program during his four years at West Milford. His predecessor, Samuel Botcho, was a state all-star in 2024.

“I have been here since freshman year building, learning and seeing what’s possible,” said Fleming, who will be attending Fairleigh Dickinson University in the fall. “The possibility of us earning varsity letters through doing something that, honestly, a lot of people kind of look down on, feels like a final reward for years of commitment, effort, tears and celebration.”

Fleming says there is a misconception that esports is simply a group of kids getting together to play video games.

“The difference is similar to going for a drive versus racing,” Fleming said. “You can go for a drive and enjoy it and let your mind wander and zone out a bit. That is playing video games for a good time. Whereas with racing you are paying attention to every turn, the lines on the road, the other drivers and how the car is doing. That is more like Esports.”

And, like other sports, there is a mental and physical aspect.

“Esports are a combination of physical skill which is having the reaction time, coordination and motor skills to respond to 100 threats in an instant and there is the mental game of predicting and knowing what your opponents are going to do and what you should do to immediately counter,” explained Fleming. “Chess and debate team are mental games where you prepare beforehand and respond to things on the fly, but there is not a lot of physical ability there. It is mostly the mind. Most people in esports have excellent reaction time and technical skill with a mouse, keyboard or a controller to hit your shots, for example. It is strenuous and puts a strain on the wrists.”

While the team aspect of esports stresses completing an objective, there is room for individual play.

“Teams aren’t bound at the hip,” said Fleming, who said he spent countless hours watching replays and game film to correct the team’s weaknesses. “You can go on a flank route and 1 versus 1 someone and at that point it is about personal skill. Most of the time it is teamwork that helps win the game.”

Esports class

When Santoro is not coaching, he is in the classroom teaching esports to middle schoolers.

“Through esports kids are learning 21st Century skills like communication, creative thinking, problem-solving, being a teammate and learning to accept defeat. If a player decides to do their own thing and stops listening to the rest of the team everything derails. The kids learn great skills and I don’t hesitate to mention our esports team at the high school.”

Santoro says the middle school elective feeds into graphic design, game design, computer science, tv/video production and more at the high school.

“People ask me if it is really a sport. Well, as a coach, I don’t have the luxury of being able to watch a play develop and call out from the sidelines to alert players about a play or wake someone up who is asleep in the field.

“Because esports action happens in a fraction of the time of a ‘regular’ sports game, our players need to be trained to recognize things in advance so they are communicating, moving, drilling. I get 60 to 90 seconds between games to debrief, breakdown and prep them for next game. It gets intense.”

Warwick Valley High School Crew

Perhaps thought of more as a college sport, crew is alive and well at Warwick Valley High School.

“We have had crew as a club sport for around 15 years coached by Jim Cody,” said Athletic Director Greg Sirico. “It is co-ed with the boys competing against the boys and the girls competing against the girls. There are four-person races and eight-person races with different distances. Jim has done an incredible job of building the program and the school district established the club because we thought there was an interest.”

Though the kids use rowing machines at the school, the team’s homebase on the water is East Arm Rowing Club in Greenwood Lake. And, because crew is a club, each member pays to participate and participates in fundraisers for things like rowing machines and boats. The district covers transportation that is provided by Greenwood Lake.

Competitions, of which there were eight in 2026, can take place in and out of the water.

In March, Warwick Valley traveled to Newburgh for an indoor rowing championship against teams like Suffern, Kingston and Newburgh Free Academy at which rowers took on rowers (2,000 meters) and coxswains, who direct the boats, took on coxswains (500 meters). The competition was broken down into categories such as sex, grade and weight with several Warwick boys and girls placing in the top three.

In April, the club dominated in Kingston at the Orange County Rowing Cup. Going up against the likes of Kingston, Newburgh Free Academy and Maritime Naval Academy, the varsity girls took first in the four-person and eight-person competitions and the varsity boys took first in the eight-person competition.

A recent standout has been 2026 graduate Riley Seijas, who enrolled at Bucknell University this month.

“During my freshman year a friend of mine told me about crew and asked if I wanted to join,” Seijas said. “Ever since then I have been rowing.”

While learning the basics of rowing as a freshman, Seijas’ performance on the rowing machines during winter indoor training sessions in the cafeteria caught the eyes of the seniors, who encouraged her to keep working hard.

“They told me if I worked hard, I could go far with crew,” she said. “My speed improved sophomore and junior years and by the time I was applying for colleges I was filling out recruitment forms for crew.”

Her hard work paid off in the form of a crew scholarship to Bucknell, where she will study biology and, of course, row.

“Technically, Bucknell recruited me for any position since I am able to row in any position,” Seijas said. “I think my strength is a longer stroke due to my height. I am also active outside of practice – going for runs, walks with a weighted vest and lifting – which develops my muscles in different ways.”

Crew has become a way of life for Seijas, who is on the water as much as possible.

“I fell in love with the fact you can go out onto the lake or a river and sit there with other people and row and create something cohesive that works as a unit,” Seijas said. “And it can be very pretty out on the lake.”

Town of Warwick Gaga ball

A sport creeping into the mainstream is Gaga ball.

Gaga ball is a fast-paced variant of dodgeball played in a low-walled hexagonal or octagonal “pit” with a soft foam ball, kickball, etc. that combines the skills of dodging, striking, running and jumping while aiming to hit opponents below the knees with the ball. After a few minutes, a second ball can enter the pit. Once the game ends, everyone can come back in for the next round.

According to Sport Resource Group, the exact origins are uncertain, with one version saying it comes from Israel (ga-ga means touch-touch in Hebrew) and another claiming it was invented in the 1950s at a summer camp near Baltimore, Md.

For his Eagle Scout project in 2024, West Milford, N.J., resident Lucien Barca built a Gaga ball pit at Mountain Lake Park in the Town of Warwick, N.Y.

“Gaga ball is something most Boy Scouts play and I had been at Mountain Lake Park multiple times to camp with Scouts and felt something like a Gaga pit would be a good attraction because Gaga ball is fun, entertaining and kind of new in Warwick,” said Barca, 19. “In West Milford, where I’m from, the camps have it so it is more well known.”

It appears the project is paying off.

“Gaga ball is a popular camp game, and the pit has been a wonderful addition to the park,” said Town of Warwick Recreation Director Sam Walter. “We have three bunks at the top of hill and a camping area we call our camp zone. This allows Scouts to use it, the Warwick Area Farmworker Organization summer camp uses it before and after swimming, Ghostlight Theater Camp will play if it is cool enough and Hudson Highlands Nature Center Young Naturalist Preschool Program plays.”

“I have heard that it gets used on a semi-consistent basis, which is nice to hear,” Barca, the Eagle Scout from West Milford Troop 114, said. “There is a lot going on at Mountain Lake Park during the summer, so it is a good fit.”

Newton High School bowling

The Newton High School co-ed bowling team completed one of its most successful seasons in recent memory last winter thanks, in part, to a team captain who said she’d barely bowled prior to joining the team four years ago.

“I joined the bowling team freshman year after my best friend decided she wanted to do something during the winter,” said graduating senior Cera Steinwand, who earned a partial scholarship to Caldwell University in the fall. “Before that I had only bowled a couple of times with my family. Now I spend a lot of my time at Sparta Lanes.”

Though she may have bowling in her blood (her mother also bowled in high school), Steinwand attributes the program’s success to the dedication of her coach and teammates.

‘Like whoa’

“We all wanted to learn how to bowl and got very good at it to the point there wasn’t enough room for everyone,” said Steinwand, the all-conference bowler who is also one of the top female bowlers in the state. “We made it to the sectional finals this year where we lost by only a few pins. Though it was a high-pressure situation it was a lot of fun and to make it there from where we started was like whoa. It demonstrates how much you can learn and how far you can come in four years.”

In that sectional championship, Steinwand was joined by senior teammates Brad Williams, Devlin Schmid, Salvatore Serillo and Lukas Straub against an all-boys lineup from top-seed Kinnelon. Rising senior Kaitlyn Steinwand, Cera’s sister, was an alternate who saw action.

“I have coached baseball, softball, golf, you name it, and bowling has been a blast,” said Newton bowling coach John Zwitkowits. “When this group of kids were freshman, they averaged between 100 and 120. Now they are between 175 and 185. This past year we were 12 pins away in the second game from winning the state sectionals against Kinnelon which was bowling five guys.”

Coach Z, as he is known, teaches eighth grade math at the middle school, where he talks up bowling to future freshman and asks other coaches to encourage kids who may have been cut from a winter sport to go out for bowling.

He is not the only recruiter.

“When I first started, my sister watched me and she decided she was going to bowl when she got to high school,” said Steinwand. “She recruited some of her friends and they recruited some of theirs. I also play soccer, so I recruited people from the soccer team. We attracted a whole bunch of people who never would have thought of bowling if we hadn’t encouraged them to come do it.”

The camaraderie, along with competition, is what makes bowling unique.

“Bowling opened up so many doors to me,” said Steinwand, whose sister Kaitlyn will be a senior bowler this winter. “Once I started, my family members bought bowling balls. My mom bowled in high school, so it reopened the door for her and we all bowl now. I also bowl in adult leagues. It is so much fun. We have so many friends and do a lot of outside tournaments. It is a whole part of my life I never knew was there.”

Bocce at Delaware Valley High School

For the past two years at Delaware Valley High School, boys and girls with and without disabilities have teamed up to compete against other schools in bocce at the varsity level.

“Our unified bocce team started two years ago as we are part of Unified Championship of Schools through Special Olympics,” said Hailey Vogel, a special education teacher in the self-contain program at Delaware Valley High School. “Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association sanctioned bocce as a varsity-level sport with a goal to foster inclusion and meaningful participation with our students with intellectual disabilities and our regular education students.”

The program, which is active at the college level, allows high schools to have two teams of up to 10 players if there is a 60/40 split either way between special education and regular education students.

“That first year, we were able to field two full teams which was amazing,” Vogel said. “We picked up bocce after a few successful unified track and field teams. I had no idea what bocce was and that first year recruiting kids I pitched it as lawn bowling in the gym because we do bowl in the fall with the kids, so it was an easy comparison for them to get an idea of what it was.”

The object of the game is to roll as many of your team’s bocce balls as close to the pallina ball as possible. The bocce balls, according to Vogel, are scented to enable students with visual impairments differentiate the balls. The green balls are green apple scented, the red ones are strawberry scented and the small yellow pallina is lemon-lime scented.

“Bocce is an equalizing sport,” Vogel said. “Some of our best players are my students with disabilities. There are so many adaptations you can make to play. As an example, teams can design ramps so students in wheelchairs can play if they can push the ball down the ramp themselves.”

Another one of Vogel’s bocce players is rising senior Jasmyn Ruzzano.

“Once she learned how to play and was around a mainstream athletics atmosphere she started to enjoy the game,” John Ruzzano, Jasmyn’s father. “It is noticeable how much these kids are excited to be in an environment with fans and family cheering for them.

Jasmyn is enthusiastic about getting better at Bocce and talks to us about the challenge of helping the team and improving her throws.”

But you don’t take dad’s word for it. Just ask Jasmyn.

“I like my teammates and have made friends on the bocce ball team,” said Jasmyn, who also competes in unified track and field. “I had not heard of Bocce before playing it. I am having fun and look forward to playing again.”