3. zEx over SK.swe – ESWC 2003 – (16-7) – July 8th-13th, 2003

“Raw talent overcomes all”

HLTV Demo (de_train)

zEx Roster

Lektrik
Volcano
Boms
Shaguar
Sunman

SK.swe Roster

Ahl
HeatoN
Potti
Brunk
fisker

Some will look at the Winter 2002 match of zEx over eoL as the big match but really I think this was the true statement made by Americans. zEx’s win over SK.swe proved they could do it not only against the best but also on their home soil. The zEx vs eoL match featured two teams where neither played that well beyond that match in the tournament. Most of eoL came out flat and never looked good in that entire CPL tournament.

The same is not true for both teams at ESWC. Going into this match both teams were playing red-hot. zEx was legit after their eoL victory but most considered them a step below the European talent. Plus eoL was never really good after CPL Winter 2002, so many wondered if zEx had just taken advantage of a team that was over hyped.

Trust me, that wasn’t the case at all.

A team featuring great talent in Sal “Volcano” Garazzo, Johnny “Boms” Quach, Griffin “Shaguar” Benger and Justin “Sunman” Summy had something to prove and they found the perfect target. SK.swe was the clear-cut favorite to win the first time event. They were the best team in the World and were in the middle of maybe the best run ever by one single team in CS. They ran into Summy wall.

Summy dominated this match and may have single-handedly won it. In the first half he put up an 18-7 score, the next closes person has 12 frags. On top of that he made a huge round victory but before we talk about that round lets talk about the first half.

In the first half zEx came out strong on Train. SK.swe was notoriously a terrible Train team and largely this was due to bad offensive strategies. They never had good timing on their upper rushes and didn’t have the AWP firepower to rush the outer bomb site effectively, one reason they picked up Spawn later. So after winning a hard fought round coming out of the alley, SK.swe was instantly screwed on money the following round.

A 4-0 lead by zEx then turned into a 9-1 lead as SK.swe couldn’t find the answer in the outer bomb site and continued to attack allowing zEx to rotate out of the inner bomb site faster. Finally SK.swe caught them off guard with a lower attack but failed to win. This set up a good rush of the outer bombsite by SK executed perfectly to score another win at 9-2. Following another good outer rush, zEx was forced to save before they came back in the final round to pick up a 10-5 first half lead.

The second half was defined by one round. The opening round saw zEx try a funky save. Remember back in these days saving out denied money to the opposing team so the thought by zEx was to force SK to use up grenades and flashes while attacking the inner bomb site. Meanwhile, Summy stayed in spawn and hoped to save out the round. It didn’t work and SK.swe smelled it out fragging Summy with one second left on the clock.

In response to the blown strategy, zEx rushed inner with deagles. Instead of planting the bomb, zEx rushed the back of the bomb site towards the spawn. Here’s when the magic came.

Summy, under the trains close to the defensive spawn, registered three huge deagle frags in a matter of 15 seconds. Each frag brought zEx closer to victory and the final one sealed it. Winning that save round put SK in a must save for not just one round but two. Once the saves were over zEx was up 13-6 and only needed three more rounds to win with 11 rounds to play.

SK.swe won the next round shutting down an outer rush that developed too slowly. zEx learned from the mistake and just simple rushed outer hard the next round. Benger picked up a couple of huge AWP frags and SK.swe was overrun the next three rounds as zEx just outplayed them with momentum on their side.

If Summy hadn’t scored those three deagle frags in the second round this easily could have been an overtime or 16-14 type score. So while the score wasn’t that close in the end, the match itself was extremely good and might have gone either way. Summy clearly stood out but all of the players of zEx benefited.

All but two ended up on 3D, Summy and Lektrik. Lektrik retired shortly after the event and Summy went on to play with coL. So all the players achieved considerable success following their success at ESWC in 2003 and the talent that showed itself in France that year became a dominant force in the scene for years to come.