T1 re-establish academy team

The T1 Academy roster that T1 was hinting at during the signing of Lee "ANS" Seon-chang has been announced. The roster will consist of ANS, Dylan "ASSERT" Romo, Anthony "dawn" Hagopian, Evan "Eshotz" Rodriguez, and Andrew "HILTON" Hilton.

The members of this lineup all come from moderate success in the lower levels of VALORANT. dawn played with Pittsburgh Knights up until recently, when he was dropped for Drake "Exalt" Branly. Eshotz played with long-running unsigned team Hollywoods Hooliganz. ASSERT has played with many mixed rosters, one of which would become Elevate, while HILTON has just been breaking into the scene on unsigned rosters and ultimately Team Serenity.

As good as some of these players are, though, it seems a given that the lineup is built to help ANS transition to VALORANT. He’s the big-name Overwatch superstar, the player that’s supposed to have the potential to be one of the best in the game. Visa issues have prevented him from getting to the US so far, if those can be resolved and he can make the transition T1 will be happy with what the roster accomplished.

It’s uncertain what events T1 Academy will be playing, as they’ll be unable to play the VCT due to Riot’s ruling on organizations owning multiple teams. It seems likely they’ll find their way in the Nerd Street Gamers, Pittsburgh Knights, and Vanguard Championship Series weekly and monthly events populating the lower levels of the scene.

While this academy announcement has drawn eyes, controversy has erupted around T1’s new assistant coach for their main roster. Upon the announcement of his involvement, PUBG personalities immediately called out Cody “Stunner” MacLeod as a former cheater in the game. It seems Stunner, then known as Exko, cheated during several PUBG events in 2018. T1 have not yet commented on the past of their new acquisition.

T1 Academy is:

Dylan “ASSERT” Romo Anthony “dawn” Hagopian Evan “Eshotz” Rodriguez Andrew “HILTON” Hilton Lee “ANS” Seon-chang

While the new assistant coach and departure of ANS makes T1’s main roster:

Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham Sam “DaZeD” Marine Ha “Spyder” Jung-woo Timothy “autimatic” Ta Rahul “curry” Nemani

David Denis (Head coach) Cody “Stunner” MacLeod (Assistant coach)