Women of CS2 esports: Talking ESL Impact and Sakura’s journey to the top with Stx

The ESL Impact Season 8 Finals concluded at DreamHack Stockholm 2025 with BIG EQUIPA taking home the gold. The victory was bittersweet, as it also marked the final ESL Impact season and the end of the ESL Impact circuit. Esports.gg spoke with Wrenna "Stx" Trampel of team Sakura Esports about what it took to reach the Season 8 Finals, the shutdown of ESL Impact, and more.

In her interview with esports.gg, Stx shared that Sakura Esports formed last November and has spent the past year building consistency with the same five players and their coach. The team committed to an intense grind, playing over 100 maps and participating in multiple tournaments each week. Sometimes, Sakura Esports players even dedicated themselves to seven-hour game days.

"About a month ago, closer to the tournament, we had an insane game schedule," she said, adding that Sakura Esports competed in multiple tournaments each week. This meant back-to-back matches with little downtime. Their practice schedule differed from most teams as they focused on playing as much as possible rather than structured routines. When they did practice, they spent about an hour on offline strategy or theory. This involved discussing ideas and refining them together.

Stx explained that she approaches this like rubber duck debugging, which involves walking teammates through ideas and asking them to identify potential flaws. For example, she works with Raven "raven" Sol on bomb site strategies to figure out an opposing team's likely moves. They then test ideas in practice and review them to find weaknesses. Sakura Esports players also do video-on-demand (VOD) reviews of their games to analyze decisions and correct individual mistakes.

"Other than that, we try to be consistent with our scrim partners," she continued. "Practice in North America can, if you're playing at our level, feel like you're playing the same teams a lot, which doesn't really help for diversity of gameplay. The last week's been good because we're in Europe. So we got to play European scrims and see a lot of newer ideas and different ways to play the game."

As Sakura Esports' in-game leader (IGL), Stx's greatest strength is her ability to shotcall and her spatial awareness. She can track enemy numbers and positions to make smart decisions, especially on the defensive CT-Side. This helps her teammates isolate enemies and take them down. Stx also said that her consistency in maintaining her performance even on days when her aim isn't at its best attributes to her team's success.

Speaking of playstyles, Stx also observed how European teams approach games compared to North American ones.

"Even just playing normal, they're pressuring B-Site super hard on Overpass and like smoking and popping through with just one person. So one person is totally happy to just get set up to go run out and sell their life if they can get a kill," she explained, referring to European teams.

Stx continued, adding that while North American players do take aggressive or risky plays, those actions don’t always fit the overall team strategy. European teams, meanwhile, coordinate their moves to align with a round's call and goals.

As noted, ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) recently suspended the ESL Impact circuit to re-evaluate how to support women's Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) esports scene. Despite this, Stx noted that Europe and South America do still have some leagues and tournaments for women. Examples include Brazil's unique events like one involving an aircraft carrier plus Europe's Female Pro League and the Tradeit League FE Masters. She said these competitions aren't as large as ESL Impact, but they still provide valuable opportunities.

In North America, the scene is much smaller, with mostly community-run events like Brace for Impact. Therefore, Stx hopes that larger organizers, such as BLAST, will step in to create more opportunities for North America and even Asia.

As for parting words, Stx told esports.gg what competing in the ESL Impact circuit means to her.

"I avoided playing ESL Impact for a while because I didn't really want to get hate and stuff like that, but the people who support us -- they really help counteract that," Stx said. "I'm pretty sure most of our parents are waking up in North America at like 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. to watch our games, which is really amazing. And tons of friends and people are showing up to support us. We'll end a game, and I'll have like 20 Discord notifications from friends that I didn't even know were watching or haven't talked to in a couple months. It's really nice. It genuinely makes me smile and warms my heart."

That's all for now. While ESL Impact's return is unclear at the time of writing this article, we do know that since its inaugural season, it has succeeded in championing the women's scene in CS2 esports.

Stick around on esports.gg for more CS2 news, interviews, and updates.