stamina: "North America, in comparison to Europe, has very little AWP talent"

For his second interview of Fragadelphia 17, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore sat down with Limitless' IGL Bobby "stamina" Eitrem on day one of the Last Chance Qualifier. The duo discussed being a returning champion to The Block, the end of his time on Strife, the process of building Limitless, and his expectations for the event among other topics.

How does it feel to return to the place where you won your first big LAN event at FRAG 16?

Feels really good. I really enjoy coming to Fragadelphia, it’s probably the most fun event I have ever been to, including everything I’ve done, so Fragadelphia is super fun, it’s always a good environment and good games.

After winning Fragdelphia 16, the Strife squad ended up going through a series of roster changes that ultimately ended up with you leaving the team. Now that there’s some distance behind that event, can you give us more context into why you ultimately left Strife?

I tried to be kind of transparent about it in my TwitLonger and I know I didn’t go into fine details or anything but, really, the biggest reason why I left is I felt like our core had stagnated and then I felt like we needed larger changes than just one person and I didn’t really want to try to force those changes because we had already gone through so many. I think sometimes when you build a team, every level you go up, you hope your team is going to scale but you don’t always scale to the level you want to be at and so when we got to Europe and I saw we were even struggling against weaker competition in Europe, my mentality was like “If we want to be a top team in the world, we would probably need more changes” and I just necessarily didn’t want to be a part of that.

I also did actually have a very strong inkling that fejtZ was going to leave. It was not something that he vocalized to anybody, and it even caught Strife off-guard when he did finally leave, but I kind of felt like it was the case just with some of the things that had been said throughout different talks, personal talks and whatnot. So it just seemed like the team was headed in the wrong direction, so it seemed like a good idea to try and get out before I had to rebuild something even worse.

Strife is well-known in the North American scene for being ambitious in wanting to import players and coaches from Europe, having had ToH1o, fejtZ, and crisby. Do you think that this was sustainable for them or do you think they were always going to go back to having an all-American lineup as they do now?

I think when it comes to sustainability and the economics of the organization, it was an organization that was largely backed by some crypto. I don’t really know how that worked but regardless, the crypto money was a big part of it and when the crypto market crashed that was a big part of Strife losing some of its funding. Now, I don’t think that necessarily was the nail in the coffin, I think they could have been sustainable with keeping a guy like fejtZ or a European coach, I just think that made it a lot harder overall.

Post-Strife you found yourself at Limitless, and Limitless began its life sort of as a rebuild from ex-X13, which was a team that saw success in Advanced. How did you end up with those guys post-Strife?

Originally, when I went to build the project there was one person that I was really eyeing up, and that was JBa. I felt that JBa was a really good player and that he was very moldable. After just having a few talks with him, I understood that he had one of the perfect personalities to work with as a player and so I wanted to build around him. He had come to me and said "I respect you a lot and want to play with you, but I don’t want to leave my guys behind, can we trial scar?" So scar was number two and so it became the trio of us and then we just went through a series of trials of four or five different AWPers, four or five different riflers and we actually decided on kmrn first, and he was somebody that just did all of the tough roles pretty well and was super selfless and a really good person to be around and he was always someone that worked very hard, so I admire that.

Lastly, when it came to the AWP position, we trialed a number of different AWPers and actually floated the idea of me primary AWPing, I just feel like North America, in comparison to Europe, has very little AWPers and very little AWP talent, and I felt like maybe if I AWP, I can pick up another rifler I can try to develop, we can be a really strong team. The guys didn’t really like that, they felt like I was too impactful as a rifler and as a rifling-IGL, They wanted to pick up an AWPer and Makzwell was just the best fit out of everybody. He kind of blew me away in terms of his dedication and his understanding of the game as a teammate, he was a previous IGL so just kind of seemed like the best fit.

As you did say, there’s an extreme drought of high-quality AWPers. One AWPer that has received a lot of positive attention is your former Strife teammate SLIGHT. How does Makzwell compare mechanically to SLIGHT from the time you spent with both of them?

From a mechanical standpoint, I actually think they look very similar when you compare SLIGHT and Makzwell when I first started playing with SLIGHT and I don’t want to make it sound like SLIGHT and Makzwell are one-for-one, at all at the moment, but when I first joined Strife we were all kind of, for lack of a better term, bottom feeders of the division. None of us were very good players, really, and SLIGHT really developed over time working with me and I feel like that’s kind of where Makzwell is right now, where he has talent but he is very raw, and I felt that he could be a development piece. I think that from a mechanic sense he is pretty good but I don’t think he knows nearly as much as SLIGHT in terms of the position and I think that just comes with time.

On Limitless you have Coastal as your coach and that is someone I have heard a lot of good things about behind the scenes, but I don’t think he gets a lot of either attention or credit. Can you tell me how you guys ended up choosing Coastal and what he brings to your project?

Truthfully, when it came to getting a coach, we didn’t have many options, however, after speaking with Coastal the first time I felt like me and him would have a lot of camaraderie and we can work together really well and he is a guy who has a lot of great ideas but unfortunately, we just haven’t had the time to implement his ideas. I would look at him as more of a tactician rather than a leader of men type of coach and, honestly, I feel like most North American teams do need more leader of men type of coach in general, and I think that scales to every roster in North America, in my opinion, just about tactics aren’t really where we struggle too much as a region. He is good, but I would like to see him develop some of his other skills and I think he can be a really good coach in the future as long as he keeps developing. Right now he is just more of an extra piece, maybe a little bit more analytical and helping with anti-strats and stuff like that.

Talking about Coastal as more of an analytical piece on the team, rather than a leader of men, another part of the Limitless lineup is Valkenn. She is also very well known behind the scenes for being a very smart analyst, but once again I would say she is another underrated piece of a lot of these Advanced teams from her previous roles. Can you talk about her a bit?

Unfortunately, what Valkenn brings to the table is too much for what we can use at this point in our team. We are so barebone and raw as a team that we really need to develop our fundamentals before we can really try to anti-start people super in-depth, but what she brings is genius-level anti-strating and analytical work. I have actually never worked with an analyst even close to her and she deserves a lot of respect for what she does.

Unfortunately, she won’t get as much praise, because people are going to look at this team and be like “stamina has a lot of experience and then you have the coach Coastal and she is very behind the scenes” but I have actually been speaking with her a lot recently and I actually gave her some potential opportunities for some other bigger organizations because I felt like although I would love to keep her, she is worth a tier one contract. I genuinely think she’s a really good analyst, working with her so far has been amazing.

We have seen teams invest in more analysts, Liquid had Lucid, Evil Geniuses has a whole big support staff, do you think she compares favorably to these support staffs within the large NA organizations?

I’ve never really seen any of the work from Lucid or anybody else, however, I think from working with her and also I know from my previous experiences, I actually had opportunities to work as an analyst for tier one organizations, so I know what they are looking for, and she does over and beyond what they are looking for, so I definitely think she can be a huge piece on a tier one team.

Limitless didn’t make the RMR, but you received a lot of attention again for almost beating Evil Geniuses again. What do you think are the factors that allow you to match up so well against a team like Evil Geniuses?

I think the way that I really try to structure my teams put us in a situation where any game is genuinely winnable, but I think that our ability to win scales against teams that play more structured and a more team-based Counter-Strike. I genuinely believe that the reason we were in that game and had an opportunity to win was because Evil Geniuses was playing a more respectful style, more serious style, and I was able to read the game and my teammates were able to make good plays off of protocols we had in place.

I want to say that, if they genuinely just disrespected us and ran at us a little bit, I don’t know if we would have been able to fully handle all of their individual prowess and that’s not me talking down on my team by any means, just genuinely think that’s the truth. I think that sometimes when the RMR comes around a lot of these teams tense up and look at the RMR as an event on a pedestal versus just another event, and in all reality, as a player, you need to look at it as just another event. Every event should mean that much to you that you are working to do your best, so I just think sometimes teams get caught up in their emotions of whether or not this event is the most or the least important and sometimes they play to that level.

What do you think of all the European teams who came to FRAG? Do you think there’s an ability for you to stack up against them favorably here at Frag 17?

I think we have an extremely good opportunity to get some valuable experience, I also think that European teams coming over here, in general, is really good. I don’t necessarily like the format of how this event is structured. I know it’s usually just like an open circuit but the leaderboard system that’s been in place kind of made this event lopsided, because the leaderboard stayed true and they kept the top eight.

But, truth be told, I don’t think some of the teams in the top eight would even be in the top 16 if they had to go through the LCQ. Honestly, we feel like we can do really well here and when it comes to top 16, top eight or top four, I don’t really know that our goal is based around one set position in terms of where we can finish. I think it’s really just about making sure that we beat who we are supposed to beat and if we go up against a tough team, that we make it competitive and that we come out of it as a better team, that’s actually the most important thing at the end of the day.

Limitless ended day one with a loss to British squad 7AM. After a close win over boyfriend peek today, stamina have a tough road ahead of them as they will ultimately need to beat Apeks to advance into the main event.