The Last Sunday
Six teams were already in. Two were still outside.
That kind of arithmetic does something to a Sunday. Not fear, exactly. Something quieter. The feeling that nine weeks of work now answers a single question, and the question is yes or no, and you find out today.
Geek Fam and Natus Vincere both knew. Which is almost a disadvantage. When the margin is exactly one series, the mind has a way of writing the ending before the draft screen even loads.
NaVi won game two. So at some point, Geek Fam had to sit with it, one game each, and locate something that doesn’t appear in any macro guide. They found it. Or they held on long enough to look like they did, which might be the same thing.
Alter Ego were already home by then. The M7 runners-up, the team everyone underlined at the start of the season. They lost to Team Liquid, lost to RRQ Hoshi, finished seventh. It’s not a surprising result, which is the part that stings. Surprise at least gives you somewhere to put the feeling.
ONIC moved through the season without that problem. Kairi, Kelra, the structure around them — they qualified first, won the half-season, won the regular season. A team that seemed to have made a decision early and just kept enforcing it. That kind of consistency looks easy. It never is.
The rest of the bracket filled in the way it usually does. Some teams earned their spots. Bigetron got theirs with a little help from a result elsewhere. That happens in sports. You take what the situation gives you.
Now six teams are in. One will end up in Paris for MSC.
Baloyskie probably isn’t thinking about Paris tonight. He’s probably still in the feeling of game three, that particular Sunday afternoon, the version of events where things went the way they went and not the other way.
That’s where you live for a while after a day like that.
Elias Rowe