{"id":62556,"date":"2026-02-14T18:06:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T23:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=62556"},"modified":"2026-02-14T18:06:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T23:06:28","slug":"florida-polytechnic-celebrates-opening-of-new-esports-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/02\/14\/florida-polytechnic-celebrates-opening-of-new-esports-arena\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Polytechnic celebrates opening of new Esports arena"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Florida Polytechnic University<\/a> is taking competitive video gaming a step further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, the university celebrated the opening of its new Esports Arena<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In the world of eSports, student Jannice Rivera stands out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wish more women and more girls felt at home and in a community with eSports, but as eSports has been evolving, we\u2019ve been welcomed a little more and more as time goes on,\u201d Rivera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 21-year-old became the captain of Florida Polytechnic\u2019s eSports varsity teams a little over a year ago. She is one of just three women who are part of the sports program. It\u2019s a space she has been familiar with since learning how to play video games at a young age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was able to, thankfully, get my longtime best friends, that are still friends with me, I was able to get them into it, and we all just started playing together,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd even though the community wasn\u2019t as welcoming to women back then, that was like 2008\/2009. With having friends in it doing it with me, I already felt more comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rivera said that pushed her to apply to Florida Poly to play on a larger scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time, university leaders said they\u2019ve seen more students become drawn to the digital sport. So far, Florida Poly President Devin Stephenson said the school has about 130 players across 14 teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd now that we have the arena in place, I can tell you, as many young people say today, \u2018it\u2019s going to blow up.\u2019 And it will become extremely popular,\u201d Stephenson said.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The new eSports arena is equipped with 20 fully loaded gaming stations. The roughly $300,000 facility was partially paid for with presidential discretionary funds, which Stephenson said was worth every penny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a very rigorous curriculum that we have here, so we need more and more student development opportunities for them outside of the labs, outside of the classrooms, and eSports gives them that sort of vetting to stretch themselves beyond the pressure of the classroom,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida Poly leaders said the goal is to help players compete on the same level as traditional athletics. The school eventually plans to offer several scholarships to students, and Rivera said she\u2019s looking forward to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe little girl in me feels really excited,\u201d she said. \u201cNow, as time goes on, we\u2019re getting recognized as an actual athletic department. We\u2019re an actual sport, and it can be very lucrative. We have the same sponsors that normal athletics do. We compete in the same way; it\u2019s just in a different setting, and I feel like we can reach a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said she hopes that includes a lot more women, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Esports Arena is open for competition and recreational use. Students can visit and play for fun during select hours throughout the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida Polytechnic University is taking competitive video gaming a step further. On Friday, the university celebrated the opening of its new Esports Arena. In the world of eSports, student Jannice Rivera stands… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDJcL1NjcmVlbnNob3QtMjAyNi0wMi0xNFQxODA0NDUuMTAxLndlYnA_Zml0PTcxMCUyQzQyNiZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IkZsb3JpZGEgUG9seXRlY2huaWMgY2VsZWJyYXRlcyBvcGVuaW5nIG9mIG5ldyBFc3BvcnRzIGFyZW5hIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.6pArB7lI599vNAuyjbmE49vQRdnWKTIecwUHwANsCUYMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":62558,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-14T180445.101.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[13637],"class_list":["post-62556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-florida-polytechnic-celebrates-opening-of-new-esports-arena"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62559,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62556\/revisions\/62559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}