North American organization NRG Esports is reportedly venturing into the competitive Valorant scene with former Gen.G CS:GO in-game leader Damien “Daps” Steele and Sam “s0m” Oh, together with recently retired NA coach Chet Singh, according to Rush B Media’s sources.
Daps has been a CS:GO pro since 2012 and has played on some of the best NA CS:GO teams in OpTic Gaming, Splyce, and Gen.G. Daps also coincidentally spent nearly three years with NRG’s CS:GO roster from 2017 to 2019, together with coach Chet. He has also led NRG to an Intel Extreme Masters XIII tournament win in Shanghai back in 2018, a tournament they nearly won with a perfect record.
Gen.G was a team Daps helped shape and lead to a DreamHack Anaheim 2020 win earlier this year when they defeated South American CS:GO squad FURIA Esports. But, Daps decided to step down from Gen.G’s CS:GO roster just a few weeks ago.
Joining Daps is 18-year old CS:GO star player s0m, who started his pro career in 2017. The young prodigy has been part of top NA CS:GO rosters like CompLexity Gaming, Team Envy, and he is still currently signed under Gen.G’s active roster.
Although s0m has yet to announce his move to Valorant, he has been spending most of his free time playing the game with retired NA CS:GO pros who’ve already made the switche to Riot’s competitive FPS.
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If the report is to be believed that decorated IGL Daps and a young and improving talent like s0m are going to headline NRG’s new Valorant roster, then this means that coach Chet will already have a solid base for his Valorant roster that will be able to compete against the best teams in North America.
NRG can also pull in their former Apex Legends pro Brandon “Ace” Winn, who was previously dominating Valorant tournaments when the game was still in its closed beta phase.
In a previous podcast with NRG Esports co-CEOs Hector “H3CZ” Rodriguez and Andy Miller, the two were initially reluctant to form a Valorant roster saying, “we wanna see how it plays out as a game, as a fanbase, who’s playing it, where they’re playing it, and what’s the skillset.”
But with Riot announcing their own competitive tournaments with their First Strike event series, it looks like NRG is finally ready to jump into the fast rising FPS scene.
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