Rise’s Poised spoke on redemption for Rise and the general difficulty of the North American Valorant scene heading into Challengers.
The Valorant North American Challenger open qualifiers wrapped up over the weekend with Rise proving among those qualified to move on. The Vietnamese-American team was jubilant at their victory, but knows they have a long road ahead if they want to make it to Masters.
Rise rebounds from Open Qualifier 1
They fell out of the first open qualifier, clear that rust needed to be shaken off. After all, Rise hadn't played in an official match for quite awhile. The last official match Rise had played prior to NA Challengers Open 1 was on October 31, against Cloud9 Blue in the NA Last Chance Qualifer.
Kevin "Poised" Ngo said the following on their redemption:
"We went into those first games last week more nervous because we haven't played matches in a while. We rewatched the games and we were playing scared. This isn't us. I kept telling the team that. We know who we are, stick to the gameplan. Minor little changeups, but we knew we were good, and we proved it here."
Rise was also one of the few top organizations in North American Valorant to not try and make roster moves following the end of last year. They've stuck together with their core, and it seems that their poise paid off in the long run as they managed to take down Built By Gamers to grab one of the last slots out of Loser's. Prior, they gave Evil Geniuses a run for their money, but lost a close series 2-1.
- Agents played: Chamber, Killjoy, Cypher
- ACS: 192
- K/D: 1.16
- ADR: 134.6
Anything can happen
The competition has been fierce in North America. After all, there were only 12 teams that made it into the month-long Challengers main event. This left several top-tier teams, like T1 and TSM, out in the cold. Rise managed to avoid missing the cut, this time.
Poised spoke to this difficulty in a post-match interview with Rivington and Vansilli after qualifying:
"I think anything can happen in this game. Anyone can beat anyone. You never know. These open qualifiers have been a bloodbath. Even top teams getting upset. They're probably watching this getting nervous, to be honest."
While Rise scraped a qualification here, they know they're up against an uphill climb. They'll be one of the teams looking to pull off upsets this upcoming weekend and throughout the next month in Challengers. Their first match, and next step along this journey, is up against Envy on February 13 at 1 PM Pacific.
Of course, this qualification is just a checkpoint along the road to improvement. Rise has a long way to go to get to their stated goal of #1 in the world. Their form may be on point now, but the razor's edge is always approaching, especially with so many hungry teams in North America.
"We're never comfortable til we're at the top. There's always room to improve until we're consistently number one."
You can catch all the action starting this weekend at Valorant Challengers NA beginning at 1 PM on February 11 with Cloud9 vs 100 Thieves.
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