Ash “Trill” Powell is from an Australian town with a lot of red dirt and a lot of bush.

Don’t get him wrong, it’s relaxing -- sort of a “small beach town.” But it’s a far cry from the bright lights of Los Angeles, where he now lives.

Oh, and the internet connection is a bit better.

Powell, originally from Broome, Western Australia, is two months removed from his promotion to the Dallas Fuel from the franchise's academy Overwatch Contenders team. In the five matches he's played in, he's had to adapt to the quicker pace of the Overwatch League, the pinnacle of competitive Overwatch, and is showing how Australian players can shine when competing on a different continent.

His promotion also highlights the benefits to fielding a strong scouting program and academy team.

“Playing in Contenders, there’s a lot of good individual players,” Powell said at the end of June. “A lot of them are pretty good individually. But the level of strategy in OWL is a lot harder, and even the individual skill.”

The ever-shifting meta in Overwatch League means a near-constant need to adapt to evolving strategies and team compositions. It means different players can shine during different stages of the season, and sometimes requires franchises to tap into their organizational depth. With 30 playable heroes (and more on the way), mastering each one can be difficult.

Trill is a main tank for the Dallas Fuel, splitting time with Son "OGE" Min-seok. (Special to The Dallas Morning News / Patrick T. Fallon)

The melding of OWL and Contenders works well, and it borrows its structure from traditional sport leagues. If OWL is analogous to Major League Baseball, then Contenders is Triple-A -- one step from the show. Though there may be different rules for the farm system, the goals are similar.

“Being a coach of a Contenders team isn’t, like, to become the best team in the world,” said Envy Contenders head coach Ash “Chu” Long. “My job is to sell players. And that’s kind of my priority.”

It also means Long can focus more on developing players, including those who might not yet meet OWL’s minimum age requirement (18).

“Not everything’s about first place,” said Long, whose team finished the latest season undefeated and as the top seed in the North American West region. “Although first place helps.”

Envy’s Contenders team has seen six players gain promotion to OWL, though Powell is the only one to suit up for the Fuel. The Washington Justice recently poached two Envy academy players: Elliot “ELLIVOTE” Vaneryd and Lukas “LullSiSH” Wiklund.

If an OWL team is interested in acquiring a Contenders player that is affiliated with a rival OWL team, the suitors must allow the parent organization the chance to match whatever it is they are offering.

If the parent team ultimately decides to let its Contenders players join an OWL franchise, they are compensated with a buyout -- similar to a transfer fee in soccer.

So even though the Fuel have first-team roster spots available, they let Veneryd and Wiklund depart.

League rules state that “buyout fees carry no set minimum and are capped at 100 percent of the player’s average annual base salary in the Overwatch League plus any applicable signing bonus, as well as subject to any contractual limitation on such fees in the applicable Contenders contract.”

(The Justice recently announced that Veneryd and Wiklund will not compete on stage for the Justice this season because of VISA issues, but they will be part of the Justice in 2020.)

Though the end goal of academy teams isn’t necessarily to win titles, Contenders squads with OWL affiliations can be at a distinct advantage over non-affiliated peers. Envy’s Contenders team frequently scrimmages against the Fuel, meaning players like Powell got weekly exposure to tactics employed by top franchises behind the scenes. It also means the Fuel can tell its academy team exactly how to set up for certain scenarios they might expect from their upcoming OWL matches.

There’s a trickle-down, too -- the Contenders could borrow OWL tactics to successful deployment in their competition, too.

So even though Powell admittedly “played like ass” in his Fuel debut, he had less of an adaptation period to his new team because of his familiarity with the squad.

Well I played like ass, stage nerves hit me harder then I thought it would, oh well time to learn and improve ggs @Hangzhou_Spark — Trill (@Trill_ow) June 21, 2019

Fuel head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins also gets to scout his own academy players during the scrimmage, keeping lines of communications with the team open. He said Powell has shown improvement since arriving in Los Angeles.

“(Powell’s) definitely doing better,” Atkins said last week. “His first couple of games, he was kind of in an impossible situation. He really got thrown into the fire.”

In addition to the level of play, recently promoted players must adapt to an everyday LAN setting from online. Powell spent parts of the past year playing in his native Australia, where his ping would sometimes hover around 300 milliseconds (Long said an ideal delay is between 20-70 milliseconds).

“The Contenders' biggest worry is whether they can perform on stage,” said Long, who had seen Powell compete on stage before he and Team Envy inked him. “With Trill it was the opposite. Our biggest worry was can he actually play our online games. Was that even doable for him?

“Once we saw how well he could do online, we knew that taking him to a LAN or whatever would be a piece of cake.”

Trill, second from left, said he was never concerned about fitting in with the Fuel. Here he is pictured in late June with some of his Fuel teammates. (Special to The Dallas Morning News / Patrick T. Fallon)

It can be tough for professional Australian gamers to compete with other regions when still living down under.

Powell is one of just two Australians currently on OWL teams (the other being Scott “Custa” Kennedy of the Los Angeles Valiant).

“The skill level for some reason is a lot lower there,” said Powell, who got his start playing DOTA 2 and CS:GO. “You learn a lot more coming over (to the United States) than you do playing over there because the skill level is lower and all you do is play each other and you don’t learn as fast.”

But Powell has helped show that Aussies can not only compete in OWL but also excel. His Orisa play makes him a key part of the Fuel for this Stage, swapping time with fellow main tank Son “OGE” Min-seok.

In getting ready for his third World Cup representing Australia, Powell is sure to continue to improve in a LAN setting, getting ready for the push for the playoffs.

And he should continue to figure into Atkins’ plans this stage.

“I want to make sure that OGE and Trill both got playing time right now because they’re both incredible main tanks,” he said, “and they both have a lot of strengths.”

On Twitter: @TommyMagelssen

Thanks for reading! Please take this survey about the article to help us determine the best coverage approach for future esports stories. If you have further comments, you can reach us via email: esports@dallasnews.com.