Colorado Clutch's Hamsword on how Clutch prepared for Agents Rising and what the future has in store for this promising team.
Going into Esports Arena’s Agents Rising tournament it was almost a given that Cloud9, Team Liquid, and Gale Force Esports were going to finish one, two, and three – which they did. However, the rest of the tournament was filled with new teams looking to make their name in the Overwatch scene. One of these new teams was Colorado Clutch, who are now looking to build on their fourth place finish in Agents Rising. I had the chance to talk with Connor “Hamsword” McCulloch as he traveled home from the tournament, and took advantage of that opportunity to learn how a team that came out of nowhere was able to perform so well, and what the future has in store for the rest of the Clutch crew.
Colorado Clutch consists of:
- Wolfgang “WGB” Braun
- Cody “korra“ Dasse
- Craig “Lumberjack” Harrison
- Connor “Hamsword” McCulloch
- Cody “Hotsforshots” Jefferys
- Luis “Lui” Olivares
- Julian “Dartos” Oprandi
Colorado Clutch came together during the beta, mostly due to a bunch of friends hoping to compete in the GosuGamers weeklies. The roster rotated early on as teammates came and left due to scheduling conflicts, but eventually Clutch picked up Lui and hostsforshots to solidify the team. Their eventual sponsor, Clutch Arena in Denver, Colorado, was with them through the whole process and helped with the formalities of starting an organization and signing up for tournaments. However, while the team itself was complete, they still needed a coach.
”We met dart, our coach, through my stream. One night he was trying to find people to play with and came into my chat and asked if we had room in our group, and so I added and invited him.”
Coaching is often overlooked as the focus is usually on the players, but Hamsword was quick to praise Clutch’s coach as an integral part of their success.
”Our coach, dart, had helped the team astronomical amounts. In the weeks prior to the tournament he had vods for every team lined up for us to watch together… During the tournament we really got to see how all of his practice has helped us. We went into every match feeling as if we were prepared to take on that team, knowing their default comps and what heroes they play on certain maps gave us a lot of confidence going into every series.”
The whole team had been working hard in hopes of a good showing at Agents Rising, and they expected this work to pay off.
”We expected to do well. We scrimmed a lot of the higher level teams in the week leading up to the tournament, and performed well in all of them; the only people we couldn't get scrims in with was C9 which was good because we knew everything about them, and they knew nothing about us, we got two of our favorite maps in the draft, and gave them a good couple of games because of that. But we did expect to at least place Top Four going into the tournament.”
Early in Agents Rising, Clutch breezed through their competition going 2-0 against their first four opponents. Their only losses came to eventual first place finishers, Cloud9, and the third place team, Gale Force Esports. But the team will not be satisfied until they are the best, and they plan to continue building upon the success in Agents Rising.
”Honestly, our next step is making sure that everyone can make this their highest priority, quitting jobs and investing even more time. Every single team member we have is very hungry to win, and to prove ourselves, which I feel like we did this weekend. We chose this roster because everyone on the team wants to be the best in the world. One of our biggest steps is getting a team house and moving everyone out to Colorado so that we can all be 100% dedicated to the team and by doing so, getting even more practice in then we already do.”
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