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It’s been nearly three years since the Sentinels Valorant esports team has hoisted a trophy from an official international Valorant tournament. Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) is a year-round series of tournaments where the best of the best Valorant players compete in teams of five in Riot Game’s first-person tactical shooter Valorant. A given team will start in Challengers. Teams with good performances are invited to a more prestigious tournament called a Masters. The final tournament of the year similar to the world championship is called Champions. Of the teams selected to play in VCT, one North American team stood tall above the rest at Valorant release.
When Valorant was released in 2020, Sentinels (SEN) e-sports organization signed a super team consisting of the players Jay “Sinatra” Won, Jared “zombs” Gitlin, Hunter “SicK” Mims, Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan, and Michael “dapr” Gulino. This team went on to win every official Riot match in VCT leading into the first big LAN (local area network) tournament of North American Valorant History, Masters 1 2021.
However, disaster struck when sexual assault charges were pressed against SEN’s star player Sinatra. SEN needed to find a substitute quickly, and they luckily pulled Tyson “TenZ” Ngo from Cloud9’s (another famous organization) bench. TenZ, widely known as the face of Valorant, was finally coming back into competitive play, and come back he did. This new roster decimated the competition, winning Masters 1 2021 while only dropping a single map. In the grand finals of this tournament, SEN won 3-0 in a convincing fashion against gaming organization powerhouse FaZe Clan. This roster had just proven itself to be the best in North America, but the real test was the upcoming tournament Masters 2 Reykjavik 2021.
Masters 2 Reykjavik was Valorant’s first official international tournament where the best teams of the regions of North America, Europe, Brazil, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Latin America would compete against each other to see who was the best in the world. What followed next cemented Sentinels in the Valorant history books. Even with the tough competition, SEN managed to win the entire tournament without dropping a single map. This dominant showing made many people believe that Valorant was in a “Sentinels era.”
“They won every match without dropping a single map,” said Alan Lam (12). “No other team has ever accomplished that or ever will again.”
Sadly, Masters 2 Reykjavik was the last time in a while that Sentinels would win any important matches. While SEN was still dominant enough to win enough domestic matches to qualify for Masters 3 Berlin, they were disappointingly knocked out in the first round of playoffs by fellow North American team Envy Gaming. This low international placement marked the beginning of the end of the golden age of Sentinels.
With only one tournament left in the year after Berlin, people were sure that Sentinels was saving strategies during Masters Berlin. The expectation that SEN would win put a lot of pressure on the players and it showed during Champions 2021. Sentinels not only disappointed the fans, but also themselves. SEN was eliminated in the group stage before any real competition was shown, proving to the world that this iteration of the SEN roster was washed.“Reykjavik was sick, but everything after was kind of mid,” said Akshar Thakker (12). “They went from the highest statistically scoring team to losing to KRU [an opposing team]. That entire year after Reykjavik was a disaster.”
During the 2022 season, SEN did not qualify for a single international tournament. During the season, the organization tried to stop the bleeding by replacing their lowest-scoring player, Zombs, with Eric “Kanpeki” Xu, but this decision seemed disastrous. With this massive failure, the upper management of SEN decided to create an entirely new roster based around TenZ going into the 2023 season.
This new team consisted of TenZ, Zachary “zekken” Patrone, Guastovo “Sacy” Rossi, Bryan “pANcada” Luna, and Rory “dephh” Jackson. This new roster was seen as a super team due to two of the players, Sacy and pANcada, being from Loud—the team that won 2022’s Champions—and the chemistry between dephh and zekken, who both played together during their time on XSET, an opposing team. Needless to say, there was a lot of hope going into the 2023 season for Sentinels Valorant.
What followed was another disappointing year. During the first event of the year which all teams of all regions were invited to, VCT LOCK//IN, SEN was eliminated in the first round and tied with last place. Sure their loss was to Fanatic, the team that went on to win the entire tournament, but this showing was not a great first impression from this iteration of the Sentinels roster. Just like 2022, SEN failed to qualify for a single Masters event and had a quiet season. Were Sentinels doomed to be mid forever?
Sentinels’ head coach Kaplan has different plans. In the off-season, SEN dropped dephh and signed Mohammad Amine “Johnqt” Quarid while also pulling in Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro as their sixth man/substitute. In the off-season, Sentinels practiced vigorously which showed when they won the Sentinels Invitational and the AfreecaTV league against some of the world’s top teams. Using Zellsis in place of pANcada for some of the matches seemed successful which led to the eventual change in roles between the two players.
In the first event of 2024, VCT Americas Kick-Off, SEN made a convincing run. After losing to Leviatán, SEN won every match needed to qualify for play-ins. In play-ins, SEN won a major upset against super team NRG, who comprised 3/5ths of the 2nd-place team of 2022. While Sentinels didn’t win this tournament placing as the runner-up to Loud, that didn’t bother Sentinels fans. For the first time in years, SEN qualified for a Masters event.
Sentinels won the first three matches they played in Kick-Off eliminating both European teams in attendance. However, during their fourth match, SEN lost to Chinese team GenG. Would this mark the end of Sentinels’ fairy tale run? SEN proceeded to win every match going forward. The lower bracket finals was a match between Sentinels and Paper Rex, the previous year’s runner-up. With all eyes on SEN, people speculated that SEN would lose just as they did in Masters Berlin 2021. SEN proved all the haters wrong.
Winning in a 3-1 fashion against Paper Rex, the final match was a rematch against GenG. In one of the closest series ever played, SEN won 3-2 against GenG. SEN had just reclaimed their crown by becoming world champions. This makes SEN the only team to ever win two Masters events with TenZ being the only player to ever win two Masters Trophies.
As Marvin Xiang put it, “Sentinels are back. I hecking love TenZ.”
