New London — The concept might elicit an eye roll, especially for those who lean toward more traditional forms of education. Imagine: competitive multi-user video games in our schools. Great. More kids eyeballing computer screens, too busy to foster communication skills beyond the occasional grunt.

And yet Clint Kennedy’s room on the second floor of the Science and Technology Magnet High School, awash in various forms of modern technology, is a case study in high school kids actually talking to each other — strategy and teamwork included — thus illustrating the ironic, residual effect of what they call a “gaming club.”

“This is educational,” said student Alex Edwards, the captain of New London’s team, which competes against many other “esports” teams across the state in competitive video games. “It really teaches you the fundamentals of communication. If you don’t have that, you are going to lose. It teaches you how to work with other people, even if you just met. If you play alone and sign up for a competitive game, you have to work with people who are at times really difficult. It also gives people an opportunity to come together with people who they might never meet anywhere else.”

Kennedy, once the director of technology in Stonington and Branford, is supervisor of innovation in New London. He has revitalized the computer science pathway at the magnet school with a “gaming club” that not only fits the computer science curriculum, but engages students with something that fascinates them.

“What are the kids into? Gaming. But I didn’t want it to be just about playing,” Kennedy said. “It should be about analyzing, building and developing. So we started building this whole club around designing and building video games.”

Soon, 80 students were meeting weekly in the new club.

“At the start of last year, the kids introduced me to the idea of competitive video games. So we formed two teams last year, a JV and a varsity, to play this game called "League of Legends," the No. 1 video game in the world right now," Kennedy said. "Every month, the company that runs it records 100 million unique players across the globe.”

New London competed in an online league last year, playing against high schools across the country in eight-week fall, winter and spring seasons. The Eastern Connecticut Conference, the league in which local schools compete athletically, soon ran a video games tournament. There was a summer internship program aimed to create an esports league for the entire state. The spring season of 2017 is underway, culminating with a state championship at UConn, sponsored by the UConn Gaming Club, featuring many state schools.

“This is probably the single best experience of kids using communication, collaboration and creativity,” Kennedy said. “The base curriculum is important, but if kids aren’t leaving with these skills, they won’t be as successful as they can be. It’s not making the kids do what we think is cool. We’re helping build skills that we know are important, but meeting the kids where they’re at.”

New London’s club includes students who cross racial and cultural bounds both from the magnet school and the high school. They play mostly “League of Legends” and “Overwatch,” which also is among the most popular video games in the world. They frequently build and modify characters who must negotiate any number of variables with critical thinking and teamwork.

“It’s all about team compositions,” freshman Anna Piccione said. “One guy came up with an entire comps just so he could play Sombra.”

Piccione explains for the uninitiated: “There’s a multitude of characters you can choose with different skill sets and appearances. What they’re good at and what they’re not. Sombra is an attack character. She’s not the best, but if you play her really well, you can do really well. She can do a lot."

"So a ‘comp’ is the composition of our team," she continued. "It’s made up of six different people. We all get to choose which character we want. We base it off all coming together and assisting each other so we can beat the enemy team. Teamwork.”

Kennedy said the beauty of competitive video gaming runs opposite to the stereotype that video games don’t inspire communication: Loners can’t win. Communication is a must.

Maybe that’s why 15 Division I colleges offer academic scholarships for esports.

“It’s the ability to think critically, to communicate and that no one person can win one of these matches alone,” Kennedy said. “You look at the behavior of the other team and see where you can gain an advantage. Like in football, if the linebacker creeps up to the line of scrimmage, you call a play to take advantage of that.”

dimauro@theday.com