Douglas: "We were pretty surprised to even make it to the LAN to begin with"

We caught up with Ghost Academy in-game leader Jarod "Douglas" Onorato after his team upset GX.

You just eliminated GX, keeping yourselves alive in the Global Challenge. How does that feel?

Feels pretty good, coming into it we didn't get as much practice as we wanted to. Andrew "ShoT_UP" Orlowski had finals beforehand, so we were scrimming with Kenny "kenny-1os-" Dang for a good week. We didn't really come into it prepared, but our mentality is always at the top, especially with Kenny here. We didn't really care if we lost — we were pretty surprised to even make it to the LAN to begin with.

Does it have any special significance for you and the team to beat that team that you just did?

After the rough times we had against them in that playoffs match, with the eco ace they had against us on Train, and Braxton "swag" Pierce going off on us on Cache. We didn't have a chance to do anything. It definitely feels good.

Earlier today you played a quadruple overtime thriller against SoaR, can you walk me through that game a bit?

On our Counter-Terrorist side we just had everything rolling. We never really counter-stratted the entire game, everyone was just hitting their shots. Nothing we did was special, from there it just kind of went the way it did.

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This is your first LAN ever, and in your first map you posted 40+ kills. How were the nerves coming in?

Coming into the LAN I wasn't as nervous as I expected I was going to be. When you think about going to the LAN, you get the jitters about it, you aren't sure how it will be, it's a completely new environment. But I think the fact that there's not an audience helps, it is basically just us, them, and some cameras.

You made the roster move to form this roster pretty late in the season, bringing in Chad "oderus" Miller and Bryan "MAKKA" Drouillard. How did that unfold?

Basically Ghost made that happen. Victor "food" Wong and Tyler "tweiss" Weiss both left the roster on their own, and I don't know that many people. So it was kind of up to Jason "neptune" Tran, ShoT_UP, and management.

Looking forward, you have a rematch against SoaR coming up to try and make it out of the group. What are you thinking going into that?

Honestly I feel better going into a BO3. We don't really have much going into it, I watched a few demos before the LAN, but not much of it is coming into play. I want a general idea of what to do, but for the most part I am just calling how I normally would. I won't really scout teams, I wanted to try to, but I haven't really used any of that information.

Ghost Academy will face SoaR in the Group B decider match, which will be commencing shortly. The winner of the rematch will earn the privilege of facing the Polish side AGO, in the second semifinal of the day.