When Gen.G Black’s Tiraye “Tiraye” Knox pivoted from casually playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive to trying her hand at competitive Fortnite, she didn’t find much success. What she found was better: Two of the women who would become her teammates and fellow competitors in the VALORANT Champions Tour North American Game Changers circuit.
Carlee “Carlee” Gress and Hannah “Hannah” Reyes are also now members of Gen.G Black’s roster who started playing VALORANT with Tiraye during their unsigned days on team OWA OWA. The team featured Carlee, Tiraye, Hannah, Dignitas Female’s Stefanie “Stefanie” Jones and Complexity GX3’s Madison “Maddie” Mann. It was playing with OWA OWA that helped Tiraye and the others realize they really could make something out of playing VALORANT for a living.
“After that, that’s when we knew that we could actually get the balls rolling here and actually pursue [a pro career],” Tiraye said in a press conference.
And get the ball rolling they have. Gen.G Black are entering the NA VCT Game Changers main event in the third seed after defeating both CLG Red and Dart Monkeys in the qualifiers. Their squad has experience playing together in the unsigned women’s VALORANT scene, which may give them a bit of a leg up over some of the more recently formed squads, like VersionX.
Gen.G Black: QUALIFIED 👑
With another 2-0 to close things out, Gen.G Black secure their spot in the #VCTGameChangers Main Event!
Thanks for all your support, we'll see you soon 💛🖤#GenGVAL #GenGWIN pic.twitter.com/4I6zydDeaD
— Gen.G Esports (@GenG) April 3, 2022
The recent shift in VALORANT’s meta with the game’s latest patch has also come as a welcome change for Gen.G Black. Astra was the first Agent Tiraye unlocked, and she’s been playing her for over a year now. Yet with the nerfs to both Astra and Viper, Tiraye said she is excited by the prospect of having to change up her playstyle.
“So me personally, I was a little bit relieved that she [Astra] was no longer in the meta,” Tiraye said. “And not only playing her, but going up against her was really annoying. It made just the game in general so very slow.”
Thanks to the hundreds of hours she has on both Omen and Brimstone, the switch off of Astra hasn’t been too difficult. Tiraye’s teammates agree that the change has allowed them to play together more, instead of with Tiraye having to linger in the back to properly convert on Astra’s utility.
“I think the day that Astra was finally nerfed was the best day of Tiryae’s life,” joked Gen.G Black’s coach Jackson “Jaxsen” Popelka.
Gen.G Black will get to show off their new compositions on Wednesday when they face off against Dignitas Female in the first match of the Game Changers NA main event. They have only played Dignitas once before, just a few days ago during the swiss group stage. Lynn “Lynn” Clarke had taken them on during a charity match in the past, but beyond that they had no real experience against Dignitas, who swept Gen.G Black 2-0.
Gen.G Black vs @dignitas on Wednesday.
We're going ALL IN. Be there. https://t.co/Of6hNr1QgI
— Gen.G Esports (@GenG) April 4, 2022
“I definitely think that first series we had against them was a little bit of you know, kind of putting our toes in the water and kind of nerves a little bit,” Lynn said. “But I think that this game coming up tomorrow, we’ll definitely prove ourselves a little bit more than we did last time.”
Tiraye agreed, citing that she actually felt their loss on Fracture was more of a Gen.G issue than anything to do with how Dignitas played.
“I think they had a really good Breeze map,” she said. “But I think when it came to Fracture, we lost more to ourselves than we did to Dignitas. I think that we have a way stronger understanding of what we need to do for this next series.”
Only time will tell if Gen.G will be able to overcome those nerves and mistakes to get revenge against Dignitas, but they seem confident that they can get the job done.
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