Donation from Giant benefits e-sports team at HHS

Holton High School’s library is a busy place after the regular school day — not the kind of busy involving students checking out books, but the kind involving students connecting with students from other schools across the country, getting ready for another season of competition.

That competition is e-sports, a competitive form of organized, multi-player video gaming, and last Thursday, visitors from Giant Communications in Holton visited the team to present a donation that is likely to help the HHS e-sports team with its 2026-27 season.

“It’s extremely helpful,” HHS e-sports head coach Dillon Kathrens said of the $5,044.72 donation from Giant to purchase equipment for the team. “When the state offers something that we weren’t expecting, that doesn’t run on the equipment we have, it’s nice that they’re able to help us get it going.”

Giant Communications General Manager Austin Taylor said his company’s donation will allow  students in Holton’s e-sports program to have “an opportunity to participate in something that they enjoy,” including games like Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Marvel Rivals, as well as an opportunity to advance to e-sports competitions at higher levels.

“Kids want to become eligible for gaming opportunities that come later, including college scholarships,” Taylor said. “This is the avenue they can take to get there and have opportunities to get scholarships and compete at a higher level.”

The donation, Kathrens said, will be used to purchase XBox Series S gaming consoles and new monitors for gaming, which will expand the number of games that e-sports participants at HHS can access.

“Last year, we just had four Nintendo systems,” Kathrens said. “That kind of limited what games we were able to play.”

For more on this and other stories, please log in to your holtonrecorder.net account and select “Sept. 30, 2026” under “E-Editions.”