EMUHLEET: "You don't learn from winning over-and-over, you learn from making mistakes"

At the start of Fragdelphia 13 Danish "Nohte" Allana had a chance to sit down with Emmalee "EMUHLEET" Garrido. They talked about the team's new contracts, David "Xp3" Garrido's role within the team, and they expectations for the event and the rest of the year.

Let's talk a bit about how you guys just re-signed contracts with Dignitas for two years, so contract re-signing is a bit of an ongoing discussion in CS:GO, with teams signing three-year contracts, five-year contracts. Can you tell me about why you guys went with two years?

I think we're all comfortable with two years since we were already with Dignitas for two years, I think two years isn't too long, but five-year contracts are pretty long so we kinda had a discussion with everybody and two years is reasonable, it makes us feel safe and we're just proud Dignitas offered us a two-year contract, that means that they want us to represent them and we're happy to be part of Dignitas. Dignitas are doing so much right now with League of Legends, and with Rocket League so we're happy to be part of the growing organization since the re-branding. It's exciting for us.

Contrasting that do you think there's a difference between contracts between female teams and male teams, in terms of length?

I'm not too sure because there's a lot of organizations that are startups right now and they aren't official like Dignitas, Dignitas have been around for a long time and I've seen bad contracts from new organizations obviously like Denial and Winterfox. So we have that experience luckily from our coach, who preps us on things to look out for and I think anybody that is new to an organization its exciting but I definitely recommend getting a lawyer or someone to look at it for you so you're not stuck in a bad contract.

Also read: Dignitas fe sign two year contract extensions

Speaking of Xp3's past experience, more of a tangential thing, did he ever get paid back by Denial when that whole thing happened?

Oh no yeah, no Denial still owes him a lot of money, right David? We never got anything from [Zachary Smith] the new CEO, because he backtracked everyone anyways, and I'd be surprised if we ever got to see that money from Denial.

Talking about you guys having been signed for a while now, with you, Carolyn "artStar" Noquez, and Amanda "rain" Smith have been together for 2.5 years, can you tell me about the dynamics of the trio?

Yeah us three and Xp3, actually their original roster since 2014 so how else to describe it as such good chemistry inside and outside of the game. I trust these girls with everything and anything and we kinda grew up with each other at this point through breakups, through marriages, all of our families know each-other's families and we have such a close, tight, unbreakable bond, and I think that's key in teams is having that good chemistry in game and out and trusting each other. So, I think its a really good core that we have and bringing Kiara "milk" Makua and Melisa "Theia" Mundorff into our team they just fit with us so well, they're so happy [and] positive, and just they're here ready to frag so that's good.

Alright so then speaking of bringing in milk and Theia, what led to Catherine "cath" Leroux's departure?

I think we decided to part with cath because we just had different goals and the chemistry just didn't work out, yeah, that's it.

So lets go to when you added Theia, you already played with her a little bit in ESEA Main and she filled your roster for a bit, so did Theia immediately fit into the team or was it more gradual?

Well the exciting thing about Theia is she has tons of LAN experience which a lot of people don't know, and we're her first all-female team so she's played with PUGs many times before like at Fragadelphias. And with her its a fun experience to have her because she's growing and molding with us. We're having her become the type of player we need because she has so much room for growth and learning experiences and she she's such a good quick learner and that's hard to find in a teammate: someone who's coachable, can take critique, and that can just listen. She's the perfect fit for us and we're already at a really good start I think with having a new fifth.

And she owns?

Yeah she owns.

Also read: Dignitas fe add Theia

You've already mentioned it a little bit but can you tell me a bit more about what Xp3 does for the team?

He does everything you can think of, he's not only a coach for us in-game on trying to teach us how to get better individually, but he's also a good mental coach. He has that good prep speech you need before an event. He can motivate you to go win the world championships even if its just a small local LAN. He's just so good with his words, and we trust him because he's been playing for a very long time and he's also really good. So he prepares us mentally, in-game, and he's... everyone feels so close with him and they can always talk to him with any issues they have, so it's nice to have someone on the team like that.

I was reading an interview where you talked about how you were doing this and your nursing job, and you're getting really little sleep, but it is a year old, so is that the case or have you managed to find more of a balance?

Now with the re-signing with Dignitas, I'm able to feel comfortable cutting down my work hours as a nurse. So now I'm doing per diem instead of full-time because obviously I love nursing, I love helping people but I also love traveling and competing so I definitely don't want to give up nursing because it's something I love to do and hopefully I can find a way to combine nursing with gaming one way or another.

Dignitas already played at NCS Denver Major and made it to the grand finals there, but you didn't take it quite over the line. Was there anything specific that happened there or was it just nerves that got to you?

I wouldn't say it was nerves I don't know, I don't feel like I have nerves anymore. I've played in so many LAN events that it's just like I don't care at this point. I just want to win. I don't think we were nervous I think we just... they had a good comeback, we just couldn't pull through, we couldn't figure out what the issue was. We kind of choked in a sense. But that's good for that to happen because you can only learn from that, you don't learn from winning over-and-over, you learn from making mistakes, so we're learning from those types of mistakes so it won't happen again.

Since you reached the grand finals at the last NCS Major, how do you feel about your potential at Fragadelphia and do you have any specific goals for the event, aside from winning it?

Yeah I'm still proud of how we played at the last NCS event, I don't think people thought we would even making it to the finals so that's what we're trying to do, we're trying to go to every LAN tournament we can, [mix-team] whatever I don't care what the rules are we just want to go, we want to compete, we want to get better, and that's why we're here. So obviously we want to win, but our goal is to make top three first and then we'll go from there. Because there are a lot of good teams here and this is just such a good learning experience for us.