In an interview with Wyatt River, Sentinels head coach Don ‘SyykoNT’ Muir talked about how the new Valorant roster was constructed and how he wanted to bring over the entire XSET roster wherever he went next among other topics.
The 30-year-old head coach said in the interview that when it was announced that XSET was not joining the Valorant Champions Tour 2023 partnered league he started looking around for opportunities to coach in the league. He detailed how he contact Sentinels and got to work becoming the organization’s head Valorant coach.
SyykoNT said that his initial plan was to bring over the entire XSET squad to Sentinels if he could, but that did not come to fruition.
“That was always Plan A for me,” SyykoNT said. “I spent over two years building this team fleshing out the system, establishing the chemistry, developing the team and the individuals. I really wanted to keep the whole team together but obviously, it’s part of the business. These guys were getting offers weeks before the partnership news even came out.”
In the end, Matthew ‘Cryocells’ Panganiban ended up with 100 Thieves, Jordan ‘AYRIN’ He moved on to Global Esports and Brendan ‘BcJ’ Jensen has yet to sign with a team.
The coach continued to explain how two of XSET’s former players, Rory ‘dephh’ Jackson and Zachary ‘zekken’ Patrone, made their way to the team and how the Brazilian duo of Gustavo ‘Sacy’ Rossi and Bryan ‘pANcada’ Luna came on board.
SyykoNT said that he collaborated with his strategic coach Adam ‘kaplan’ Kaplan and dephh on what kind of roster they wanted to put together. The organization initially targeted pANcada as a Controller player that has fragging power and when the team heard LOUD was breaking up, they went to see if Sacy would also be interested in a move to Sentinels.
For the final starting roster spot, SyykoNT said that he was looking for a sniper and had talks with Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker, Ardis ‘ardiis’ Svarenieks and Saif ‘Sayf’ Jibraeel. In the end, Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo remained with the team because Sentinels would not have to buy out his contract from another org, and he seemed like a great fit, according to SyykoNT.
“When we got in that phone call one of the first things that he said, and I didn’t even have to prompt it, he said, ‘Look there is the public perception of me. That I don’t want to work hard, that I don’t want to compete. I just want to be a streamer and I just want you to know that that is false,’” SyykoNT said.
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