In the Summer of 2015, Cloud9, wearing the forever remembered tank tops, placed second at three straight international LANs, and hit the peak under their lineup of, Skadoodle, seang@ares, shroud, n0thing, and Freakazoid.

Cloud9 beating Team Envyus at ESL Pro League Season One Finals (credit: HLTV)

While having a similar run in the summer of 2016, winning ESL Pro League Season Four finals, and coming in second at ECS Season Two finals, the 2015 summer will always be remembered by C9 fans.

Prior to the start of this ESEA Season 29, we find ourselves in Season 28, in which Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert has found himself back in the lowest division of Counter-Strike, ESEA Open. Jordan, along with other “Old Guys” such as Tomi “Lurppis”, Michael “Shroud”, Robin “Fifflaren” and more, playing for fun and streaming every match. Dropping only two maps in the entire season, they made the playoffs easily, but after the first round were forced to forfeit, due to ESEA schedule restrictions and the ever changing schedules of analysts on the team.

The original “Old Guys Club” (credit: betwayesports)

This season however, Old Guys Club got a big boost; Playing in the second highest level of North American Counter-Strike, Mountain Dew League. While “seang@res” and “n0thing” were the only two players left of the original roster, and some not so old guys had joined the team, they finished the season at 12–7, and one spot out of the playoffs.

What does all of this mean you may ask? Only two of the boys of summer played in this season of MDL with Old Guys Club. This brings us to the next CS:GO Major, Katowice 2019. Four out of the five players from that roster decided to join up, enlisting the help of “SileNt” in place of “Freakazoid” (who is playing for Swole Patrol) to play the open qualifier, which could earn them a spot in the closed qualifier for the Minor.

Starting Monday, and ending Tuesday night, the team won four straight best of ones, and a best of three, the team has now qualified, for the qualifier, for the minor. They are now only two qualifiers removed from the thing we all want, Old Guys Club stickers.

The Old Guys Club jersey we could see at the minor, should they qualify

Old Guys Club are now two Best of Threes away from traveling to Poland, for some of the players first LAN in quite a long time. “Shroud” has not played at a LAN in over a year, since PGL Krakow 2017. “n0thing” has played as recently as June, standing in for mousesports, and earning second place at ESL One Belo Horizonte 2018, but has not played on a professional team since the PGL Major as well.

The summer of 2015 will always be a greatly remembered time for fans of North American Counter-Strike, and specifically Cloud9. While Cloud9 have recently made some interesting roster moves that could have them place high at future LANs, and earlier this year made history by winning the ELeague Boston Major, if Old Guys Club make it to the minor, or further, it will be an event to remember for the fans of the Boys of Summer.