*By Britt Terrell*
The dreams of teenagers everywhere will come true this fall, when video gaming becomes an official high school sport, sponsored by the National Federation of State High School Associations.
The best high school gamers can earn scholarships to college and turn what used to be considered a distraction into a part of their extracurricular experience.
"There will be millions and millions of kids every year ー especially in the U.S. ー who participate in eSports in an organized way," said Delane Parnell, founder and CEO of Play VS, the startup that will bring an eSports league to nearly 20,000 high schools across the country.
There are already about 200 colleges in North America that offer eSports scholarships, according to Parnell. PlayVS will help these schools recruit in a more organized way, and raise the profile of the best high-school gamers.
"We're excited to be able to own that system as a company," Parnell said in an interview with Cheddar. "We're going to loop in some recruiting technology directly into the platform in which recruiters from colleges will be able to easily recruit players in terms of engaging with them but then also be able to see their performance data from an individual stand point and a team performance stand point validated."
PlayVS is working with game publishers to determine which games will be included in the inaugural high-school season.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/esports-is-coming-to-a-school-near-you).
As Russia intensifies its war on Ukraine, President Biden announced a ban on oil imported from the aggressor nation. Critics of Russia have said this would be the best way to force Putin to pull back, but curbs on Russian oil exports are expected to send already skyrocketing oil and gas prices even higher, further impacting consumers, businesses, financial markets, and the global economy. Leslie Beyer, CEO of the Energy Workforce and Technology Council, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss. "It's certainly going to increase pricing, but it is the right thing to do," she said. "The industry itself has already pulled out of the significant portion of its operations in Russia."
Two friends have joined forces to come up with an app dedicated to making mental health more approachable and to provide users with the tools needed to improve their mental health and overall well-being. Co-Founders of the Dial App Jonah Salita and Marcel Johnson, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
On this International Women’s Day, Deb Cupp, president of Microsoft U.S., joined Cheddar News to talk about the implementation of her pillars to extend the company's culture, such as acting with care and putting the team first. "What I like about the pillars is they're very simple, so it's easy for us to think about how they show up every day in our lives," Cupp said.
The growth of the metaverse is bringing new challenges to managing safe, diverse communities. Helping Cheddar kick off Women's History Month, Tiffany Xingyu Wang, chief marketing officer for AI-powered content moderation company Spectrum Labs, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss how platforms can help create safer, more inclusive online communities in the metaverse and about her own experience as a woman in technology. "Trust is really the new digital transformation, and it should not be a siloed task solely belonging to chief security officers, to privacy officers, or the people who were given the task of trust and safety," she said. "It should be a priority for all the C suite and a whole company to rally around."
