Throughout August, we here at BLAST.tv have been celebrating AWPgust, a month where we look throughout Counter-Strike history at some of the best AWPers ever to touch the game.
We're coming to the end of AWPgust now, and while we've spent time talking about AWPers young and old, as well as players like kennyS and GuardiaN, now we want to shift our attention to CeRq.
One of the best AWPers in NA CS:GO history despite not even being from NA, CeRq will go down in Counter-Strike lore as being one of the deadliest snipers to ever touch the game.
CeRq arrived in NA with NRG after a year with Outlaws, a team with a lineup consisting of players from his home country, Bulgaria.
An unknown at the time, he replaced ptr on a team that at that point consisted of daps, Brehze, FugLy, and Danish player Anj. A team far from being one of the better teams in the region, things began to turn around for them with the addition of Ethan from CLG at the beginning of 2018.
"Leaving your family behind, especially at such a young age, to pursue your dream takes a lot of courage and bravery. Anyone with that sort of commitment should be respected in my opinion." - autimatic
By Summer, NRG had become a team capable of qualifying for S-tier tournaments, and CeRq's performances were central to that.
Second place in ESL Pro League Season 7 Groups was followed up with first place at ECS Season 5 groups, and although Pro League Finals were disappointing, a top four placing at ECS Finals showed this NRG squadron were ready to challenge for the top spot in the NA rankings.
Before Summer was out, they finished second at StarSeries i-League Season 5, only losing out to NAVI, and first at IEM Shanghai, their first win together as a roster where CeRq would pick up an MVP award with an incredible 1.34 rating. That wouldn't be the only trophy that year either, they would claim cs_summit 3 thanks to a BO5 victory against OpTic.
"CeRq was a monster and, at his peak, the most feared awper in NA." - autimatic
A disappointing time at the IEM Katowice Major 2019 would see NRG make their first change of the year as FugLy made way for former Major MVP, tarik.
A string of top four placings would follow, including at events such as StarSeries i-League Season 7 and IEM Sydney, but as NRG failed to win a trophy in the first half of the year, they made their second change of the year as stanislaw arrived.
In just their third event with their new leader, following an already strong quarter-finals finish at IEM Cologne, NRG recorded a semi-finals finish at the StarLadder Berlin Major, a result that still stands as the highest Major placing of CeRq's career.
As it turned out, it would be CeRq's last event with NRG, but not because he got kicked, because the entire team would move organisation and join Evil Geniuses.
It could have just been the roster growing in strength with the addition of stanislaw still being recent, but the move to EG granted the squadron with something of a honeymoon period. They won ESL One New York, beating newly-crowned four-time Major champions Astralis, and then StarSeries i-League Season 8, beating fnatic in the final and with CeRq racking up 1.27 and 1.21 HLTV ratings respectively.
"Cerq was a very disruptive AWPer who was always picking us off one by one. If there was a millisecond timing for a shot he would go for it and get away with it most of the time. He was very good at going for hard shots and coming out on top and it was a nightmare to try and default against him. Whenever he was in a do or die situation he mainly came out on top." - autimatic
Sadly, that was as good as it ever got for CeRq. As CS entered it's online era, EG became the best team in the region for a while, but just as every other team in that time, it wasn't possible to maintain, and that was the beginning of a steady decline for the Bulgarian.
As the world came out of lockdown, there was big changes to EG, and Stewie, RUSH, and autimatic would all link up with Brehze and CeRq in a roster that even from inception, seemed like one that was already over the hill.
Sadly, it wasn't just Stewie and RUSH, the two players who would last the least amount of time on the roster, who were over the hill. CeRq had declined during the online era, and it never looked like he would find himself on the server again, a decline that would eventually cost him his place on EG as they turned inwards towards their Blueprint Project.
"Cerq was a really fun person to be around. He was always joking and trying to lift the team up when things were tense. On top of that he was constantly asking for feedback and suggestions for how he could improve." - autimatic
A sad end to an incredible tale, CeRq's time with EG is unfortunately now likely bound to be remembered for it's later failings than it's earlier successes. One of the greatest AWPers in NA CS:GO history, his career is one that should be remembered far more fondly than it is currently.
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