SK Gaming met een Source team!

Interview property of SK-Gaming.com

Introduce yourself

Hey, my name is Nico Strott aka. sYrox and I'm 24 years old. I live in Dietzenbach, which is near Frankfurt and I'm the Team-Captain of the new SK Gaming CS:Source Team. When I'm not playing CS:S, I study business administration, train at the gym and go out with friends.

How would you describe your team's current level within Germany and the international scene?

At the moment, it is hard to say how good the team is in comparison with the other teams because we have played only a few official matches with this lineup. Currently, we can see ourselves at the preparatory stage for the upcoming EPS Season 17, but we are very confident to have an excellent team, when the first matches start. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know :-)

Nevertheless, I think we'll be one of the top teams in Germany and even rank among the finest teams of Europe. But it's hard to give a solid prognosis how teams will place on events or in a league because it depends more and more on the form of the day when top teams face each other.

Say something about each member of your team as a player and as a person.

Let's start with Patrick 'mEiJinp' Kriebus. He's a really experienced player and leads the team within the matches. He's an excellent all-round player and possibly one of the best players in Europe. Apart from that, he's a really nice guy with whom you can have a barrel of laughs.

Another important player is Christoph 'disruptor' Doelger. He's the stabilizing element when it gets dicey. I've never seen him losing control of his temper :-) He's an extremely tactical player who considers every move carefully. Additionally, he has a high degree of experience and comes to the aid of mEiJinp in tactical questions.

Christian 'Rak' Hermenau-Puhlvers is one of our 'madfraggers' :-) Less thinking, more shooting :-) He has very good rifle aiming and makes use of it wherever he can. Though he is not as experienced as disruptor or mEiJinp, he forged ahead within the last seasons and gets less nervous in tricky situations.

Our other 'madfragger' is Robert 'TORNADOTONI' Radosevic. Like Rak, he's an aiming-machine and solves problems fast and straightforwardly. I know only few players who have an aiming like he has and who have the ability to frag 3-4 players in short time.

Last but not least we got Stephan 'ludicrous' Duesterhoeft. He's our manager and stand-in player and probably the best manager the CS:S scene has ever seen. He's always reliable and knows what to do in any situation. You can always appeal to him with any problem. I don't want to miss him.

How has the process of integrating experienced players with younger up
and coming talents been for your team?

Meanwhile, the idea of mixing up 'old' experiences players with young talents is not new and proved its worth several times. This mixture works really well so far and I'm more than confident that we will achieve very good results with this team, if we keep on working. Furthermore, the mixture opens up totally new possibilities. You're always flexible and able to change your strategy rapidly within the game.

From my point of view, a team comprising unexceptionally young fresh and un-experienced players is chiefly dependent on frags, whereas a team comprising 'old stagers' is more focused on tactical solutions than on quick frags. We try to find the golden mean.

What can you say about your performance in the ESL Major Series finishing 3rd overall?

At the beginning we were really disappointed about losing the semi-finals against Power-Gaming. But if you keep in mind that this was our first match and the team had been formed only a few days before, we will not reproach ourselves. The next match vs. DSRack was a lot better as we had been able to have more training before. As a consequence, we were happy to win this match and could reap the fruits of our labour. All in all, we can be contented with the 3rd place and have to keep practicing in order to be more successful in the future.

How did the move to SK Gaming come about and what are your expectations now you will carry the SK colours?

Well, we have been without an organization for a long time as there were different problems with hoorai and WILD LIONS in the past. We played for both teams in the last Season, but cash-flow problems forced both organizations to close their businesses. As a consequence, we played 10 out of 14 matches without a supporting organization. After this long time, we received several offers and even kept on searching for the right organization ourselves.

SK evinced interest after our manager had built up the contact with Alex and Timothy. Later on, we discussed SK's offer among others within our team and decided thatit suited best. We signed the contracts and here we are :-) I hope we will perform strongly wearing SK's colours and that SK will be a name to fear, from now on even in the CS:Source scene. As far as our plans for the EPS 17 are concerned, we aim very high. We will definitely do our best to reach our goals and as I said before, make SK a name in the CS:S scene.