ANa: "I believe a female player will one day play in a mixed team"
We're now a few days into BLAST Bounty, and our next game at the event will prove to be a historic event in Counter-Strike history.
Imperial fe, the team who has dominated women's CS with an iron fist since ESL Impact began will take on NAVI, last year's team of the year in the mixed scene.
Before the game, we spoke to Imperial's star ANa to get her thoughts on the match and what it means for a female team to have the opportunity to make their tier one debut.
"It's definitely an honour"
You've got a big game coming up as you make your tier 1 debut during BLAST Bounty, how do you feel about it?
I'm feeling really exciting, I think it's a good opportunity for us being the first female team to participate in such a big event. I'm grateful for it.
Being the first, and especially after the success in ESL Impact, what does that mean to you?
It's definitely an honour. I don't think a female team has had a chance like this, so for me personally, I take it first of all as an experience, because being a female team it's quite a challenge to play against top teams. It's a chance to grow as a player and as a team.
In terms of what it will do for the women's scene, how important is it that you get this experience?
I think it's definitely important, we don't get these kinds of chances and I believe that if you want to become better, you need to play against better opponents. Sadly, the women's scene isn't well developed at the moment, so it's hard to play against better opponents and develop yourself with these kinds of experiences.
For me personally, I think I'm one of the few female players who has had the chance to play on a big stage like when I played in Cologne, and that was a huge deal for me. It helped me with stress and being on such a big stage with so many fans gave me a lot of motivation. It's the same with this and it will help us in the future.
Photo: Freddie "GrimyRannarr" Pritchard/INSITEYou mentioned the women's scene being underdeveloped and it's having some issues at the moment with organisations leaving the scene, what are your thoughts on that and the impact it will have?
It's really sad. I was a bit shocked to see most of the European organisations backing off from the scene. Most of their reasoning was because of lack of funding or the scene being underdeveloped, but I believe that if you want to grow a scene and develop a scene, you need to make certain sacrifices. You can't grow without risk.
I hope that people change their minds and give us a chance because I believe we deserve it.
What do you think needs to happen for people to change their minds?
I think people should be less judgemental and more supportive, be there for us and believe in us.
Not now, not tomorrow, but one day I think that if we can increase the number of players and give them a safe environment to play in, we'll see a few female players who are capable of playing in more than just the female scene and will be in mixed teams in the future,
In terms of your team, up until recently you were unbeaten on LAN, for people who are unfamiliar with you, what would you say about your team and your dominance?
We're very proud of the fact we've managed to win all of the ESL Impact tournaments and having our winning streak. It means a lot to us and it means that our hard work pays off.
I think as well, we're one of the only teams in female CS to have had these kinds of advantages. We've played in CCT and now we have this, and that helps us become better on the server and the experience we get on LAN is a big benefit too. Our work ethic as well as those things gave us the wins.
Let's talk about that game in Bounty, what are you hoping to get out of it?
I'm just going to be open about it and be realistic. Right now, I can't compare to the legends of CS and these teams, but I hope that we're going to go through it and get experience that gets us used to playing against teams like this.
It's going to be only beneficial to us, so I hope that we can put on a good match against them.
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