Malik.A: The Road To Epic.LAN

So we managed to catch up with Dean 'TotunG' Grealish, the Team Captian for our CS:GO Acadamy Team, about the road to Epic.LAN 18 and to see how the Acadamy team is doing. Here's how we got on.

Question: So you were picked up by Malik eSports Over a month ago now. How do you feel the team has came on since then?

Getting picked up by Malik certainly helped us gain motivation to become a top UK team and with the pick-up we've trained hard with perhaps the results not coming in as of yet but we hope to see them soon. Unfortunately with the 'exam season' being present we had to scrap our training routine for almost a month which isn't ideal but it had to be done. However we hope to resume schedule next week in preparation for epic.18.

Question: With 'Caspian' helping the team out, how has he been able to help the team or players as individuals?

Caspian is a great help to the team especially to those that are still unsure on how to play proper team-based CS. He has a great mind for the game and has even helped me think for the game differently which obviously helps me as an IGL. It's surprising on how much CS can be learnt by merely thinking through situations in the game and in competitive CS, I believe this is the most important part of improving individually and as a team. As you can see by the majority of his team's results he's doing well and a lot of it is down to their understanding of their game and evident opportunity to abuse the current level of most the UK teams.

Question: So once the exam season is over how is the team going to prepare for epic.18?

At this moment in time we've sort of got hold of the basics for the map pool but now I'm focusing on the teamwork aspect of the team. All our players are talented individually but it's still getting that team synergy which is the hard part and thinking for eachother. We've gone for a more relaxed calling style so this is important that the players can develop themselves by knowing what to do in certain situations so I like to test them or even simply question them on how they'd approach certain situations. Apart from that its just watching demos and the long road of improvement.

Question: Does having exams this close to an event worry you?

Obviously it interrupts our training and stuff and it would of been better if we could of had this time to improve. Its our first LAN so we're not expecting anything too great but we're just going to try our best and hopefully cause some upsets. Our aim is to get out of the groups which is achievable but will be hard especially with the popularity of the summer LAN event. It'll be a good experience no matter what as we've all never been to a LAN and we might as well get as much experience as we can.

Question: How's the morale leading into the event?

We're all pretty excited to go as it obviously is our first LAN so no matter if we win or lose we're going to have fun either way. I think the lads are hopeful for wins but we do know the difficulty of being successful with so little time and stuff.

Question: How do you as a player manage to find the time to play CS and get the practice in for an event coming up, along with your exams?

I play CS about 6-8 hours on weekdays with between 8 - 12 hours on weekends. This obviously means a lot of staying up late - At first I thought I'd begin to get up earlier and play before school just like other sports people but I decided I make up for it at night anyway. With my exams this has gone down but I still have been playing despite them. In the future I hope to be playing CS 75:25 in a ratio with a part-time job so I'm essentially committing to CS. I just hope its enough.

Question: Any Final Words?

Just like to thank Malik for taking us up even as a small team and a big thanks to Caspian for his help and insight. A shoutout to our awesome sponsors Crispsvr and SkinVault.

Keep an eye open for more CS:GO related articles about both teams.

Don't forget to follow TotunG on twitter: @MALIK_TotunG and also the mentioned ''Caspian'': @CaspianCS

Website: http://malik.esportsify.com/
Twitter: @Malik_esports