The celebrated and once globally dominant Sentinels roster narrowly avoided a disaster today by winning their rematch versus Akrew in the final elimination match of the second VALORANT qualifier for 2022 NA VCT Challengers Two. Sentinels takes the 12th and final spot in the upcoming main event.
Akrew had sent Sentinels down to the lower bracket after a 2-0 upset in the upper bracket round-of-16, meaning the former 2021 Masters One and Two champions would need to win five straight series just to sneak into the 2022 NA Stage Two group stage. Sentinels took care of business in the first four series (all 2-0 wins), and made a statement in map one of their Akrew rematch; 13-1 on Haven.
Icebox was a much closer affair, but Sentinels eventually pulled away after stringing together several VALORANT attack rounds fueled by some TenZ heroics.
Sentinels even having to play through qualifiers can be considered a surprise. They found themselves in unfamiliar territory at the conclusion of the NA Stage One main event after being knocked out of playoffs early after two straight losses to The Guard and Version1. The slip meant they would miss an international LAN for just the first time ever. Following the loss, they made their first roster move in over a year since acquiring TenZ, moving zombs to the inactive roster and acquiring Eric “Kanpeki” Xu from none other than Akrew.
Kanpeki experienced trial by fire in the first open qualifier for Stage Two, and while he helped Sentinels defeat his old team in the first qualifier, the sentinel/initiator flex and his new teammates fell to two qualifying teams in FaZe and Luminosity. But while the newly re-tooled Sentinels roster has looked a little shaky up until now, their dominant lower bracket run in the second qualifier (10 straight maps) has been nothing short of impressive and comes only days after bringing back Rawkus as coach.
Sentinels’ place in the NA VCT Stage Two main event is secured, but the team now only has less than a week to prepare for a stacked group stage featuring regional favorites like OpTic, C9, and The Guard, plus a plethora of red-hot new squads like FaZe and TSM. The main event kicks off on Friday, May 13.
