Curro battles Californian school district in international Minecraft friendly

07 June 2021

In a first for South African esports, a local group of learners will battle it out against an American school district in the world of Minecraft. The Minecraft Esports International Battle, will see a team composed of Curro learners, part of Curro Holdings, the JSE-listed independent school group, take on learners from the Fresno Unified School District in California, USA, to see who can construct the best 3D worlds.

The Minecraft match is set to take place this coming Friday, 4 June 2021, at 17:00, when the teams will meet online for a build-battle for the ages. Each team partaking in this friendly match will consist of eight learners, with the Minecraft match divided in two parts.

 

How the competition works

The first part is a quick-build round of 20 minutes, where the teams are tasked with building 3D objects in the Minecraft world around a topic that will be announced at the start of the event. This means learners must think on their feet and neatly plan out their best ideas to construct as quickly as possible.

The second part sees the teams engaging the world of Harry Potter, spending 35 minutes constructing anything from the Hogwarts Wizarding World. The teams were provided with this topic beforehand and they have been busy planning their builds for the past two weeks, ready to construct their 3D world as soon as the clock starts. 

Scoring for the event takes place according to a rubric, with points awarded for, amongst others,  the likeness of their build, productive teamwork, added aesthetics and environment, and the manipulation of the team’s 3D space through size and scale.

 

International coordination

The event flowed from the highly successful inaugural Inter-Curro Esports Challenge last year, where Curro became the first academic institution to officially use Minecraft: Education Edition as an esports arena. Curro piloted the project for Microsoft, who owns Minecraft, to great acclaim. When the Fresno Unified School District heard about this, they asked Microsoft to facilitate an introduction to the Curro esports team to share some findings. This has led to an ongoing collaboration between the Curro group and Fresno, which has guided the global implementation of Minecraft esports.

With its league completed, the Fresno Unified School District’s team is composed of the winners of its local competition. Because this year’s Curro league is still ongoing, the Curro team consists of eight invitational learners, four from Curro Krugersdorp and four from Curro Aurora in Randburg. Magdeleen de Kock and Bertus Liebenberg, teachers at Curro Krugersdorp and Curro Aurora respectively, are coaching the Curro Minecraft team.

 

Catch the action here.