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Ricky “floppy” Kemery and Erick “Xeppaa” Bach were recently added to Cloud9 Blue's Valorant squad, and they are already reaching new levels.
The former Cloud9 (C9) Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) players switched to Valorant on April 19th, 2021. They had been a part of C9’s CS: GO squad since 2019.
A week after their joining, C9 Blue won six consecutive maps against numerous top-tier squads and made it to the finals of the Valorant Champions Tour 2021: North America Stage 2 Challengers 2, only to lose to Sentinels.
Xeppaa and floppy found their roots in the NCS Grand Finals at Fragadelphia 14. Floppy joined CS: GO-MDL, along with two of his teammates from ATK. They were joined by Anthony “vanity” Malaspina from eUnited, and Xeppaa, from the unsigned team named Rap God, back in 2019.
What made C9 bring floppy and Xeppaa to their Valorant squad?
Cloud9 achieved a lot of success during its initial days in the international competitive scene. However, the team started struggling after one of its main players, Tyson “TenZ” Ngo, left the squad in January to pursue a career in content creation.
Later, Daniel “vice” Kim’s dismissal in March put the team in the hunt for new players. As a solution to the issue, Cloud9 Blue transfered their existing CS: GO players to Valorant.
Both the players, floppy and Xeppaa, have contributed a lot to Cloud9's success in the international competitive scene, ever since they officially joined the Valorant squad.
As per Nerd Street Gamers, floppy said:
“I played a month or two of VALORANT when it came out in beta. But, honestly, I didn’t really like it at the time, so I just kept playing CS. I’ve enjoyed playing with the [rest of C9 Blue] because I knew them all already from CS, so it’s really fun to play with them and we really out here [winning].”
Despite winning the first-place prize of $20,000 at Fragadelphia 14, CS: GO-MDL parted ways. The entire ATK trio, including floppy, was signed by Cloud9 as their CS: GO roster.
C9’s floppy later said:
“We got signed at the last Fragadelphia LAN for CS. Everyone was just so hype, we were so happy. There’s a feeling of we made it, but also, you know, you have to keep grinding. You don’t just beat the game when you are signed.”
Since Xeppaa is relatively new to Cloud9, he shared his feelings of joining a Tier 1 esports organization.
“Joining C9 was a big thing for me. I knew I wasn’t going to stay on Chaos forever, and I always wanted to join a Tier 1 org. I’m happy I was able to reunite with leaf on C9 Blue as well.”
Cloud 9 Blue qualified for the Challengers Finals this weekend. They are one of eight teams competing in the Challengers Finals. Of all these teams, only two will represent North America in Iceland next month in the first international LAN evein the history of Valorant.
