Highschool Starleague season ONE

You may have known us as the HSSTL, or the High School Starcraft Team League from a time long ago, where communication was handled through an e-mail list consisting only of each Team Coordinator; where registration was handled manually via posting in a thread; where reporting matches was handled through several Challonge! round-robin brackets, one for each region; where you couldn’t even attach all the replays from your match without hitting the upload attachment limit of three…
Together, we’ve all gone through (and hopefully learned from!) many challenges. We began an ambitious experiment with a whopping 72 team count -- that’s over 360 players! Throughout the season, hopefully each one of you has grown -- not only as players, casters, or coordinators, but as leaders. We are extremely proud of the effort all of you put in and thank you for coming together for an awesome Season 0 -- scraping together a team of five players in only two weeks is no easy task, let alone leading them through a gruelling Pool-and-Playoffs format, which, due to the relatively short season, was unforgivable.

I’m sure you all will be relieved to hear that this year, we won’t need those makeshift Challonge! brackets, West Coast players won’t need to miss dinner, and HSSTL is now possible to pronounce plainly and simply, HSL. We have been working very hard since that fateful day in July when CCA/TP played an epic Best of 9 to take out Lynbrook Highschool in our first ever finals, which attracted a peak of 351 viewers. So we would like to welcome and invite you to the NEW HSL. After many talks with the CSL (Collegiate Starleague), we’ve joined forces in an attempt to take eSports to the next level. From this season on, CSL and HSL will be working closely together to bring passionate students an opportunity to compete with thousands, if not tens -- no, if not hundreds of thousands to prove their abilities, skills, and talents. Want to be a progamer? Looking for some games to practice casting to try to work your way up to the big dogs? Or maybe you just want to prove to the world you have what it takes to lead a team to success -- whatever the reason, we want you to take advantage of this opportunity to have fun, or for some of you, to prepare for the next level -- that of the Collegiate StarLegaue -- and beyond, for those of you who will seek professional SC2 careers.

Since Season 0, many things have changed and improved. To create a more unified community, we will be using the same [amazing] map pool as CSL’s + Show Spoiler +. Also, (and thanks for all your concern and excellent feedback), we will now be using the same format as CSL, meaning we will say goodbye to the old Winners’ League format (the same used in the GSTL, also dubbed the “All-Kill Format”). So, even though we bid farewell to the GSTL map pool and format, we will be using a more diverse map pool that includes Blizzard, GSL, and iCCup maps and now players will be assigned their own set for each match, without knowing their opponents until after the rosters from each team for that match is submitted. Example + Show Spoiler +
This means that the winner does not keep playing until he loses so one man can no longer carry a team, effectively shifting the importance of having just one outstanding player to that of having an entire team working together, practicing, studying their opponents, and preparing strategies.

Please have your coordinator send an email to HSteamleague@gmail.com requesting the official rules email (all of which will be posted in here just not in a personal format), and then reply with the requested information. This will confirm that you intend to participate in Season One and provide us with your info, however, also on our long sought after website you will need to have each member of your team register for your team, and you, the coordinator, must create that team on the website (don’t worry it’s easy). Once you have done that you will be set to play and ready for the season to begin November 26th with registration by email due by November 13th!

IT IS HERE! So many of you have been asking almost everyday when it will be and I am sure many others have been anxiously awaiting and checking our facebook posts. So enough of the wait, here it is, I give you... www.HSstarleague.com Other exciting things besides the website are also coming to HSL in the coming days and weeks, make sure you stay tuned for even more events and competitions!

We're not too strict about the spread right now, but may change this stance soon or in a future season. Within the city is definitely fine, we might change it from bordering counties to within your county though this season, with people who are in bordering counties having to e-mail us to ask for an exception (most cases it will probably be accepted if there is effort in the e-mail explaining the situation properly, but for people who live in areas where there is a high high high population, we will most definitely not all it xD -- on the other hand someone living in a remote area might be able to join any team from their state.

Also, for all of you saying you don't know any players. Don't be so closed minded! Do you really think that there aren't more players? Have you talked to EVERY SINGLE person and asked them if they play sc2? Obviously not, who would do that? Let me put it this way... if you think no one else plays sc2 at your school, ask yourself this: Has anyone come up to YOU and asked if you play sc2? Probably not. So take the initiative and post fliers and etc. to find some players.

There are millions of copies of SC2 sold after all. Most people who play are young adults or high schoolers. You really can't think you can't find at least a few starcraft players that you can convince to join HSL in a high school population of 1000-1500 can you? Let alone city, then district, then county.

1 hour: 8 teams
1 day: 35 teams
2 days: 45 teams
3 days: 62 teams
4 days: 71 teams
1 week: 82
current count: 118 teams!!!!
Player count: 694