corn: "I already think we're better than where we were with Davenport"
Fisher Tsumani are rolling after two straight tournament wins at the Hol1day Cash Cup and Fragadelphia X Tap 2.
During Fragadelphia, Tommy "corn" Eckhart spoke to Dust2.us’ Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about joining his third collegiate roster, competing in ESEA Main, and the lofty goals and expectations he's setting for Fisher.
The full interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets underneath.
You recently joined this Fisher roster, making this the third collegiate team you’ve joined. What prompted this move?
After Davenport, I got the offer from Fisher initially to go that next semester, but I really wanted to take some time after an emotionally stressful time for me. So I went back to community college and got my associate’s degree. I didn’t know if I was even going to keep playing, but I was thinking it over and when I got the offer I compared it to where I was going to school and decided to take the risk. I want this to be maybe my last hoo-rah for playing. I don’t know if I’ll play after Fisher at all, but I might as well get the degree.
Is the degree still the primary focus?
Oh absolutely. At the end of the day, my education is really important to me and I’m really focused on getting good grades and getting my bachelor’s degree. I’m also thinking about going to law school. We’ll see what happens, but the degree is the focus for all of us. It’s stressful having practice, and we’re taking it more serious than we have in past semesters and we’re playing ESEA now, but at the end of the day we’re here to get the degree.
Three of the players are Europeans studying abroad. What’s it like having those players on the team?
It’s amazing. I’ve learned so much. I don’t mean this in a mean way, but it feels almost like what Davenport was supposed to be; we had all these players that were so interested in Davenport and it just kind of didn’t work out. A lot of it was just unlucky. But it feels like the roster here is what Davenport should have been. It’s just a great experience overall.
We did see the team miss out on ESEA Advanced. What’s the feeling on playing in Main?
We all feel like it’s a step down. My European teammates have played in Advanced and made it far, AlekS has played for Fnatic Academy, 00 Prospects, etc. We were really bummed about it, but at the end of the day, we weren’t ready for it. We lost in the qualifier fair and square, we weren’t playing up to our full potential in the last game, and we lost to the eventual winners. I’m expecting us in Main to kind of steamroll, this kind of a practice season. Even if we were in Advanced it would have been a practice season, because of the way ECL moves up now. We just want to get the practice win, bring up our floor, win Main, win Advanced, then get into ECL.
So you think this roster has the potential to reach ECL and attend regular NA events
I already think we’re better than where we were with Davenport. We aren’t as consistent yet, but our roster hasn’t even been together for two months, and I feel that the heights we are going to reach are going to blow past where we were at Davenport. Our eventual goal is making ECL playoffs; we want to go far, we want to go to these invite LANs like Challengers Atlanta, Katowice, Melbourne. These are our goals at the end of the day. We’re not where we want to be at, but with more practice this semester and next semester, we’ll be there.
Fisher Tsumani are currently competing in ESEA Main S51, having won all three of their matches played so far.
