With the VCT Americas Ascension tournament over as of July 9, The Guard are making their way back into tier-one VALORANT after defeating regional rivals M80. It was a true team effort, but one player in particular stood out, both in Brazil and on the stat sheets.
Already noted as a rising star in the lower leagues, Trent Cairns has only grown in strength since the team’s rise to the No. 1 NA seed back in early 2022. When he got his true second chance after a weak LAN at Copenhagen, he stomped all over the competition and completed his team’s goal to get back to tier one.
Related: The Guard secure future in VCT Ascension with revenge sweep
In a year when M80 have constantly made it through the upper bracket in the playoffs to face The Guard, the lower bracket finalists, Americas Ascension was the opposite. The Guard sent M80 down the first time around in a 2-0 sweep, going undefeated and beating them 3-1 in the grand finals to earn their spot in VCT Americas for the next two years. Trent was crucial to their success, and the stats back this up.
Trent led all VCT Americas Ascension players in five major stats throughout the tournament, according to VALORANT stats site VLR.gg. He does have a big sample size but not nearly as large as M80 since they played more games in their lower bracket run. In some of the more popular stats, trent’s match rating led the way at 1.28 and his average combat score was above everybody else at 236.9. On top of that, he led in kill/death ratio at 1.44, kills per round at 0.82, and KAST at 81 percent. KAST stands for kill, assist, save, or trade, determining if a player got some sort of value and how likely it was for them to make their round useful for their team.
Even in the stats he didn’t lead, trent was among the best. He was eighth in assists per round, at 0.38, and second in average damage per round with 152.2. Plus, he was clutch when needed, winning the second-most clutch moments with seven, only behind M80’s Mouhamed “johnqt” Ouarid.
This is not only an amazing LAN performance for trent but a bit of a comeback from his last major LAN. At VCT Masters Copenhagen in 2022, The Guard were the top seed in NA after upsetting OpTic Gaming in their meteoric regional rise. They stumbled out of the gate at LAN, going out 0-2 in the playoff stage to go winless at their only LAN of the year. They almost made their redemption run at the 2022 Last Chance Qualifier but were rolled over by 100 Thieves in the finals.
Now, The Guard will be able to face that 100 Thieves roster again, with similar players on both sides, at least as of July 2023. Considering how the roster stuck together to compete in tier two, it’s hard to imagine trent or any other player going their own way as they fight on in 2024 and 2025.
