A few weeks prior to the acquisition of Mann, Lawhorne informed Team Pandemic of his decision to go inactive, which gave the team a gracious amount of time to find a replacement.

"I think voodoo will be a very good person to replace Haplo. Haplo could have been a great player but he didn't have any drive to improve in CS as a player and with the team, so that was hurting us some, " said Grant "Griff" Hall. "I believe voodoo will fill in those areas that we were lacking in."

Mann, now playing along side teammates Grant "Griff" Hall, Chad "daffsta" White, Drew Morehead and Adam "elusive" Messner, is expected to bring more consistency to the team because of his previous experience and leadership. Mann was a vital part of the Echo-7 lineup that had a sixth place finishing at Summer CPL 2003.

"When we were deciding on a 5th, we were going through people that we thought were the type of person who would fit in with our team attitude wise. I just remember watching [rs] at Lethal Gamers this past weekend and noticing he had really good comms and was puttin up some big numbers for his team," according to Hall.

According to Mark Dolven, President of Team Pandemic, the team was aiming to be as local as possible at the beginning of the year. The team previously had three members living in the Pandemic house and two other living less than two hours away. With the loss of both Lawhorne and former teammate Ryan "genocide" Messner, Team Pandemic is no longer the local team that it once was.

The team still resides mostly in the Mid-South region of the United States and will continue to LAN when possible. Although the team's current situation is not up to par with Dolven's standards of a local team, he still aims to have the team attend tournaments and to have at least one boot camp inside the Arkansas Pandemic house every month.

To read more about Team Pandemic, visit their site at http://www.teampandemic.net, and be sure to catch Mann's debut in tonight's CAL-Invite match versus Fear Factor. Pandemic's press release is on the next page.