mertz: "When we do good as a team, I usually shine as a player"

North Academy's first bigger international event, that served as a warmup for DreamHack Open Winter which they will attend next weekend, didn't go so well for the Danes. North Academy finished the group stage without a win, losing to the likes of Endpoint, NOREG and Ukraine.

mertz admitted that the limited number of tournaments they can play as an academy team can be frustrating

A day after their elimination, we caught up with Daniel "⁠mertz⁠" Mertz who didn't hide his disappointment with the result.

I'll start back when you added sycrone and b0RUP, you made a big change to your team. Tell me a bit about the thinking there, what were the expectations when adding the two new players?

We had two players before who were very experienced, they've been playing in many other teams, bigger teams that North Academy. We wanted to even the field in terms of experience, between the players, and grow together, instead of being an academy with only three players are academy players, in a way. That was our thinking.

What were sycrone and b0RUP, as players, adding to the team, what were their roles?

We all played together in the Danish scene before, I've played personally, both in teams in b0RUP and sycrone, so I know what I could expect from them. b0RUP is a lot of firepower and good at lurking, sycrone is more about mid-round calling, LOMME was a player we just put into the in-game leading role, who is not an in-game leader. By bringing in sycrone we got a dedicated in-game leader and better mid-round calls.

Recently you had a big success, qualifying for DreamHack Winter, you picked up four BO3 wins against some decent teams. How did that happen, what was the feeling in the team when you managed to qualify fo DreamHack?

We were estatic, we were bootcamping in our offices and this is the first time I'm going to go to a big event like DreamHack, so we were really excited. We came into it thinking that we can qualify, but we didn't have any expectations like that, we just wanted to get far in the qualifier and get some good CS. When we qualified, we were all very happy and are looking forward to playing.

Doing that qualification you had a very good showing, individually. Consistency is maybe something you've been struggling in the past and then it kind of solidified there. Is there anything you've been particularly working on or trying to improve on yourself?

I don't know, it's more like a team effort, I believe. When we do good as a team, I usually shine as a player, so we work a lot on our mistakes together. We compliment each other when we do good things, we look at stuff together, look at demos and talk about the mistakes we do.

Coming here, where was the bar set, what were the expectations for you guys coming to WESG?

We expected to get out of groups... But that didn't really happen. And then.. I don't know, it was a big flop.

We can go into details about particular matches, tell me about the game against Endpoint. That was the game against the least favored team in the group, what went wrong there?

We came in with a game plan, to be more structured. And when we were playing, it just kind of felt off. They had a lot of good timings, good plays, ALEX was really good at pushing at the right times. So always either they were getting behind our back, or they were getting one or two entries. So we had a rough start to the game and we are a team that, if we don't get a good start, it's hard for us to get back because of the inexperience.

Did the start of the tournament, losing the first two matches, impact the morale of the team? Coming into the next matches, did you already feel down and defeated?

I wouldn't say that we were feeling defeated, our mood was still really good. We felt that we could still do it, that we could still get out of group, if we beat both GODSENT and NOREG we could get out. But as soon as we started to get a lot behind NOREG we were feeling down, we were definitely feeling like it was kind close to being over.

With this result here, even though it is a bad result, I guess it gives you something to work on. What is the plan for preparing for DreamHack Winter—so things like this don't happen?

Firstly, we are going to look at all the demos, we have four BO1's. They are not the best demos to look at because when we played against GODSENT for example, on Train, we already knew that we couldn't get out of groups, that always puts a little stopper on things.

But we are definitely going to look at the other demos, we actually did it last night and we are going to go home and practice before DreamHack Winter, we don't have that much practice time, but we are going to do the best we can.

Adding another question, as North Academy, you are kind of limited in the number of tournaments you can play, since you can't play a bunch of tournaments that North is attending. How does that feel for you guys as a team, is it sometimes a bit frustrating that you can't attend and play as many qualifiers as others?

It definitely gets frustrating when you really want to play an event, but the first team is in it. However, after this event, you can see that we are not ready to play against really good teams when it matters, and we need to work on some things before we come back. I hope we can do it before DreamHack Winter.