When the dust settled, the Cloud9 White roster stood tall above the rest of NA women’s VALORANT yet again, sweeping CLG Red 3-0 in the grand finals of VCT Game Changers Series Two. Without dropping a single map in the main event, the team laid down the gauntlet towards the rest of the all-female teams: If you want to beat us, you have to challenge the teams that are better than us.
Following their grand finals victory, the C9 White players attempted to light a fire under the rest of the female VALORANT rosters of NA, imploring them to test themselves against the top VALORANT teams in open qualifiers. C9 White’s Annie Roberts says those tough adventures in VCT open qualifiers helped mold the team into what it is now.
“They need to start getting into these open tournaments,” she said post-game. “When we first joined those tournaments, we weren’t winning, we were getting rolled, I think we even got 13-0’d a couple times. But that didn’t stop us. We didn’t go home and cry. It gave us more footage to review so that we got better. That is the one step you can take to actually improving beyond your scene; actually going out of your scene. We went beyond the girls’ scene and that’s why we’re at the top right now. I think if other [female] teams do that, then we’re going to see more close matches, and maybe a team taking a series off of us.”
“If you want to be better than us, you have to compete against people who are better than us,” Katsumi added. “You can’t do that playing the women’s only [events].”
C9 White’s Melanie “meL” Capone relayed that Shopify Rebellion, whom C9 rates as the next best women’s team in NA, will be competing in events like NSG and Knights invitationals in the near future. All the C9 White players were happy to hear the news that their grand finals opponents CLG Red will be playing in the second open qualifiers for VCT Stage Three. MeL expressed her fondness for the idea of playing against other female teams in events that are not women’s only.
Regarding VCT Stage Three, Cloud9 White plans to compete in the first set of open qualifiers, which begin just a week after their Game Changers victory on an entirely different patch. While coach Chris “Dream” Myrick isn’t thrilled about having to play on 3.0 after preparing for Game Changers to be played on 2.11, he proclaimed this season the “summer of C9 White,” with all the players out of school and focused squarely on VALORANT.
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