As we went into 2018, the top of the NA CS:GO scene looked to be set as there were only two teams at the top. There was Cloud 9, the ELeague Boston Major winners. The other team was Liquid, a team that quickly surpassed Cloud 9 as the year went on. They looked to be the only internationally competitive team a s they had distilled all of the best talent of the NA region into those two rosters. However Damian “daps” Steele has built another internationally competitive team in NRG and has once again proven his worth as an invaluable NA leader.

Daps has been an in-game leader his entire career and the first team he led to gain notoriety was the stack under Denial Esports. This included players like: Daps, Keith “NAF” Markovic, Eric “adreN” Hoag, Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella, and Jacob “FugLy” Medina. This was the core that was eventually bought by Liquid to become their CS:GO squad. After playing for a few months on Liquid, daps was eventually removed and had to rebuild another team from the beginning. This would become the theme of his career as he’d lead squads from NA to a good competitive level before being left behind.

There is a certain reasoning behind the removals. Daps individual play isn’t strong enough to match the players at the top level, but he does bring good leadership and structure to a team. The problem is that the NA region has a certain disregard for tactics and structure. Jason “Moses” O’Toole often cites the death of CGS as what handicapped the growth of the NA region for so long. After CGS ended, all of the leaders and great minds of NA Counter-Strike quit. This left a gigantic hole of knowledge that needed to be relearned and transferred. Top level Counter-Strike isn’t transcribed anywhere, it can only be studied through demos or handed down from peers.

On top of that, the NA CS scene had always had an emphasis on skill. Legendary Canadian player Griffin “shaGuar” Benger did a reflections with Duncan “Thorin” Shields and on that podcast said, “I think it will always be America’s curse to rely so heavily on raw individual skill.” This culture has gone back through the ages of NA CS and in a time where statistics were the fastest and easiest way to evaluate players, the NA CS culture was built around star players with incredible stats. When push comes to shove, NA players often pick loose fast paced skill over tactics and teamplay.

We’ve seen this happen even in modern times in Cloud 9. After Jake “Stewie2K” Yip left the squad, Cloud 9 decided to give Pujan “FNS” Mehta a chance to become the in-game leader of the team. In the end the experiment lasted shorter than a month and in FNS revealed that they only had 5 days of total practice. In the end, the Cloud 9 players didn’t want to play under that system and ousted him from the team before it could be given a real shot at becoming anything.

This is the culture that Daps came into. Soon after Liquid, Daps led another team. This time under Conquest where he reunited with NAF. Alongside him the team also had: Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan, Will “RUSH” Wierzba, and Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz. This team became solid and was eventually picked up by OpTic. They were able to win the ELeague: Road to Vegas, but had serious internal issues.

Soon after the team picked up Oscar “mixwell” Canellas. Daps reflected on why he got mixwell into the team in an HLTV interview, “We needed someone really aggressive and mixwell is the perfect answer to that. Someone who has a completely different mindset and a completely different style of play…his mindset toward the game and his will to win is greater than any North American’s.”

At the time mixwell was a good player on a small team known as GBots eSports Club, however daps decided that the team should give this player a shot. He had to convince OpTic to do it as he recalls in an ESPN interview, “When I originally got Oscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho with Optic, even Optic was sorta hesitant to do that. They wanted to keep Shahzeeb “ShahZaM” Khan and not get Mixwell.“

In the end daps convinced the team and this ability to scout and give chances to younger talent became one of the hallmarks of Daps career. In every team he has been a part of, he has consistently found young unknown talent and given them a place to shine.

Soon after the team became much stronger with mixwell as the main AWPer as it added another aggressive element that the team desperately needed. They were a solid third team in NA, but needed one more move to take them up a notch. On August 2016, the OpTic recruit Tarik “tarik” Celik to the team. This was to be the end of Daps time on OpTic as a confluence of strange events happened where OpTic first benched stanislaw, then swapped him with daps for in-game leader.

Daps was once again left in the wild and forced to start over, to rebuild again. This time he became the leader of NRG after the German players left the team. He alongside FugLy and Vincent “Brehze” Cayonte became the core of the team. However, unlike the times on Denial or Conquest, this was to be a long slog. The team continually had roster issues as they tried to find the right pieces. NRG tried to get a slew of different players, both veterans and young players like: Peter “ptr” Gurney, Allan “AnJ” Jensen, Omar “MarkE” Jimenez, and Cvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov. Among those, CeRq was by far the best pick up and shows daps ability to evaluate talent. By the time CeRq was recruited, all of the big organizations were trying to buyout all of the best players and promising talent that they could. In that entire mess, daps was able to find a diamond in the rough in CeRq. He recounts how he had to get him into the team in an ESPN interview,

“I think the number one thing when I was watching AWPers to replace ptr, in terms of skill, is movement. I think movement is more important than anything….The second thing is mindset. When I went for Mixwell, the team was even a little hesitant, it’s like “who is this guy?” But when I talked to Mixwell, just like, his attitude towards winning.”

Once again Daps showed a great ability to scout for talent and this was a harder deal to close as he had to convince NRG that it was worth the risks. In the same interview he recalls, “CeRq and I made the argument [to NRG] that if we comprise here then why even invest in the team if you’re not even going to get a player who can be a top five AWPer in the world?”

The results weren’t coming in and it got to the point where either daps was forced out or he willing took on the coaching role for the team. However the team got even more disastrous results than before and daps came back into the lineup. The team was eventually finalized as they got the final piece they needed in Ethan “nahtE” Arnold from the collapse of CLG. That was when the team started to finally click.

They became an incredibly dangerous online team as they started to destroy all of the other NA region teams online. While this is a good feat, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to LAN. The reason being that all of the top NA teams that go to LAN cannot do as much scouting or prep for the online games as teams that don’t go can. In addition to that, you never know how a player will translate their performance from online to a live environment where the pressure starts mounting up.

This was what happened in the first outing for NRG. At IEM Sydney they bottomed out of the tournament despite a lot of hype surrounding them. They played a very close game against Astralis on Overpass, but beyond that weren’t particularly impressive. It was still the first LAN and one in Australia where jet lag could affect them the most. Their second LAN at ESL Prol League Season 7 Finals wasn’t much better as the team was eliminated fairly quickly. CeRq recalls the stress starting to play on LAN caused in an HLTV interview,

“I just got tired being bad on LAN. We were doing bad and I was blaming myself because I know I could play way better and I was just hoping I could show it. I guess I’m just emotional.”

In the same interview, CeRq recalls how Daps calmed him and the team down. He says, “Actually I’m trying not to put pressure on myself or my teammates. Every time we play, we have this thing where daps just says ‘guys, it’s just a video game, just have fun’, and that’s how we’ve kept the pressure off ourselves recently and that’s what’s been helping us a lot.”

At Starladder i-League Season 5, the team proved that they weren’t just onliners, but could translate their potential to LAN. They were on the verge of being knocked out in the Swiss group stage as they started 0-2. They were able to battle their way back defeating VG.Flashgaming, HellRaisers, and Renegades to get to the playoffs. From there they upset Liquid in the ro8 and beat North to get to the finals. While they were defeated by Na`Vi, it was an overall good result and showed that Daps had once again built another internationally competitive team. One that could make the playoffs of an international LAN. Soon after the team followed it up with a X place at ECS Season 5 Finals.

From Denial to Liquid, Conquest to OpTic, and now NRG. Daps has consistently shown to be able to assemble new teams with young talent and elevate their performances. Moses once bemoaned the fact that all of the legacy players and leaders had left the game after CGS. That there were few people left to help the next generation of NA Counter-Strike players learn the fundamentals of what it means to play Counter-Strike. Daps has come to fill that void. His entire career has seen him build and rebuild teams over and over again. It has seen him help teach the next generation of star players from Liquid, OpTic, and NRG, from players like NAF, mixwell, and CeRq. He has continually rebuilt teams, rebuilt his career, and helped rebuild the NA scene. Through his career he has proven himself to be one of the most invaluable leaders in the NA region and someone who now leads one of the best teams in NA.

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