Hi guys, Zenabi here.
It’s been over a year since I lasted wrote a blog here regarding Ecko Esports, and I couldn’t be writing in a tougher time for the team.
Dust Team League
The past few months have been extremely hard for us. A lot of the players motivation for the game had completely died to where we had practically only 2-3 players playing the game on a WEEKLY basis. This was pretty evident in the Dust Team League that happened over the first quarter of the year. When we signed up, we had a roster of 12 players, all of which were very capable on giving Ecko a significant run in the league and our hopes of finishing our group in the top 2 looked promising.
The scheduled time for games and our players practice regime really made it a struggle to send out 4 players to play every week, let alone come close to the top of the group. This is were the talent of Craig “Azure” Mackechnie and Sean “Probe” Kempen really shined.
Craig went an outstanding 16-5 in the groups, carrying us on his shoulders through the second half of the group stage as Seans university schedule affected his ability to make games on time. We managed to still finish 6th in our group and thus qualify for the playoffs, were we eventually lost in the quarter finals to PSISTORM Gaming.
The most disappointing thing in the end of the Dust League was our players participation. In four of our ten group stage games we lost the series due to an inability to send out anyone. This isn’t entirely our players faults, obviously I should have made more attempts to reschedule games to allow us to have more players available to play, and that solely is on me.
Roster changes
After Dust League, Craig had officially left the team, seeking better opportunities elsewhere in the scene, in particular a better team environment that wasn’t just him and Sean playing regularly.
This sparked an interesting conversation
EDIT: decided to rewrite this bit to give a more accurate description on what happened
At this point I was frustrated with the team, and took it out on the team. I can’t remember what my comment was and Skype wont let me load it up anymore, but it was overly harsh and honestly rude of me. But it conveyed how I felt and honestly began the fall of Ecko Esports.
At this point, Ecko Esports had lost Enak, Infected, Redemption, and Satu alongside Craig.
You can find our current roster here:
Future?
Ecko Esports has been pretty quiet as of late and that is solely due to our future being in jeopardy. Though I love the game of Starcraft and will continue to do my best to support the players still remaining in our team, the search now looks to expanding into our game titles before Ecko Esports can no longer be saved.
The website is FINALLY in the process of being recreated with the help of Michael Zierschm, but it in our current state it might not eventuate into anything.
I hope this wont be the last time I write a blog regarding Ecko Esports, and am doing what I can to keep the team above water, how long we can keep this up, who knows. Hopefully for a while longer yet.
– Jordan “Zenabi” Fighera