tory on the future of women’s CS: “I think girls just need a little more time.”

I remember, it was early 2025 when our coach messaged us. We already had a new coach by then—his name is Bubble, and he’s Bulgarian. He wrote: “We’ve been invited to Katowice.” Oh, not Katowice—it was the first BLAST tournament back then, online, when we played. It was BLAST. <…> You know, my goal was specifically to qualify for tournaments like that on my own. So I always tried to play more in the men’s qualifiers—you know, participate in the qualifiers and somehow qualify on my own. But then Valve just introduced a new system, and it turns out we got an invite for free. And so, you know, my first thoughts were: “No, we have to turn it down.”

After the match, the emotions were intense, because, first of all, we had a really great atmosphere during the match. That’s probably thanks to Zainab, because she kept saying—she was shouting the whole match: “Come on, guys, don’t think you’re playing against NAVI—just play your own game, enjoy the match.” And after every kill, we were screaming on TeamSpeak like crazy. And that’s why we had such a great vibe, you see. And even though we lost, we knew that, well, we put on a good show.

I think the girls just need a little more time and more tournaments to grow and reach at least Tier 2. Because, man, if you compare the level of women’s CS from three years ago to the level during the most recent ESL Impact League tournaments… Back then, we played a lot of games at the CCT, and by the end, we were actually starting to take matches away from HLTV-ranked teams. That had never happened before.