Aqua: "Every one of us wants to play at the top events one day, like the main team playing ESL Pro League"

We sat down with BIG Academy's top performer in the WePlay Academy League Season 1 group stage ahead of the German team's first LAN match in Kyiv.

The first match of the WePlay Academy League Season 1 Finals is ready to kick off with BIG Academy facing off against MOUZ NXT in the opening series of the tournament.

Ahead of the bout, we spoke with one of the key players in BIG Academy's third-place finish in the group stage, Nico "⁠Aqua⁠" Kembitzky, who ended up as the team's highest-rated player in the round robin stage with a 1.09 rating across 14 maps played and crucial performances in the squad's early victories against NAVI Junior, Astralis Talent and MOUZ NXT at 15:00 .

Aqua shared some insight about his past and how he got a spot in BIG Academy, what it meant to join the ranks of an organization like BIG, with a structure helping him and his team grow as individuals and a unit with the help and support of guys like Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz and Nikola "⁠LEGIJA⁠" Ninić, as well as the team's performances so far and what they hope to achieve at the WePlay Academy League in Ukraine.

Let's start with a little bit about yourself, your background and how you landed a spot in BIG Academy.

I started playing competitively two years ago with some German teams that weren't really known, but then I got picked up by some other teams and ended up in Epic Dudes at the start of the year. We played 99Damage division 1, which is the highest league in Germany. We had some bad results, we didn't achieve what we thought we could, and after the season ended Christian Lenz approached me saying he wants to talk to me, so we met on TeamSpeak and he told me about his idea, his plans for the new BIG Academy team, and that they're interested in me. So yeah, we just talked and when we first talk I was already interested because BIG is the biggest German esports organization right now and what he told me was very interesting.

Lenz told me about the WePlay Academy League and I spoke with LapeX and pr1metapz who were already on the team. I had played with pr1metapz before and I knew both of them already and we just talked about their goals and what they want to achieve, which fits what I want to do, so there was a good connection. We already had glaVed and NIKZEj on paper. It took them two or three more days to agree to play with us and the team was formed, we didn't even play any test games because we knew what roles everyone had and we knew what to expect.

When you talked to LapeX and pr1metapz, what did you talk about? What are the goals you shared?

The main parts of the discussion were about the amount of time we want to spend playing together as a team, but also about how much time everyone wants to spend with their own practice and so on. Also, what people want to achieve in esports because it's kind of hard if you have four guys that really want to grind and want to someday play on the big stage at tier-one events and you have another guy who just sees it was a fun game and just plays some Counter-Strike against some better enemies.

It can be hard because then four people want to practice more and this one guy just says 'nah, can we just skip two or three days?' That's not the case for us, every one of us wants to play at the top events one day, like the main team right now playing at ESL Pro League. So yeah, the discussion was about the passion and the effort that everyone wants to put in.

You guys adapted pretty quickly, it was a bit unexpected that a team that was made so last minute would do so well. You didn't even have to go to the play-in and you finished the group stage behind the two favorites. What do you think it was that allowed you to mesh so well early on?

Yeah, it was definitely a big surprise. We had a lot of fire and motivation going into the league. The first game against NAVI Junior was probably the best game we played in the entire league. Everyone just wanted to show that we're capable of competing with the other teams even though we're rather unknown. We didn't have many HLTV matches and nobody really knew who we were, so we wanted to prove that we won't just lose to everyone, we're a clear competitor.

We also had a little honeymoon period, to be honest, because we just had good fire, good motivation and good hype, which we carried on into the other games as well, but obviously the first games had the biggest hype because they were our first officials with a large viewership. So yeah, just a lot of hype contributed with us winning so much.

Talking about yourself, personally, you started the event putting up big numbers in the statistics department, but as the tournament went on and you got into it everything went down a bit. Why weren't you able to keep that initial impetus?

I definitely knew that I couldn't keep up what I did in the first two or three games because I put up a high ceiling. I feel like after I had two or three bad games... I'm a person that has some confidence issues, like when I have a bad game, I tend to get into my own head and it's hard to get out of that moment. I'm talking to a sports psychologist two hours a month and yeah, sometimes I stand in my own way, but if I get a good start in a game, like what happened in those early games on Nuke, something like that can happen because I'm just feeling it and I have confidence in my moves. But if I ever have a bad start it can happen that I don't trust myself anymore like I do in other games, which is something I'm working on, but it's hard to fix.

Moving to an organization like BIG where you have facilities and a sports psychologist, what is it like joining a structure like that for you and your teammates?

It's pretty insane, when the team was formed and complete, we had a media day in Berlin that we traveled to, and right when I walked into the BIG office I was really surprised about how professional everything is. When we did the pictures and the interviews, it was really, really professional. That was the biggest change, everything is way more professional, way better equipment, and you feel like you're in good hands.

You don't have to worry that something will turn out in a bad way. You have social media support if you don't know how to write a tweet, they'll help you, and they just push you in every way and give you support wherever you want it, which is really, really good because smaller orgs don't have those capabilities. They don't have the sponsors. So that's a big change and a big upgrade.

What's the integration like in regards to BIG's main team? Do you get to spend time with them, chatting, learning? What's the integration like?

When the Academy League was going on tabseN helped us a lot. He streamed our games and while he was streaming he would say what we could do better. After the matches he joined our TeamSpeak and was talking to us about what we could do better, how we could change our game and adapt it. Little details to help us improve our game. We managed to fix some things, others didn't really work out because the competition he's playing on is a bit different than our competition, but he had a lot of input.

We also have the possibility to talk to LEGIJA, who is back as an assistant coach. So for example, two days before flying to Ukraine I was talking to him to get some tips for my CT sides, and they really do help us a lot and we can ask them what we want and they'll try to find some time. Obviously they have their own practice as well, but they try to make some time for us which is really, really nice. It's not an opportunity that everyone can have and we're really glad we can have it.

Regarding the LAN itself, what was your preparation like?

We sadly couldn't bootcamp because NIKZEj had to work, but we had three or four weeks where we practiced everyday with just one or two days off a week. We're still a new team so we had to get our map pool finished and fix the maps we already had. We started a little slow but we've had good, fast improvement since we got into practicing without officials. We still think we haven't reached our top, not even close, I think we can go even higher, so it was a lot of preparation by fixing our maps, adding new maps, and a big issue was our communication, so we worked on that a lot.

Your first match will be against mouz NXT. You traded maps with them in the group stage, but how do you think you'll stack up on LAN?

They're going in as favorites and we're the underdogs, however, I think that skillwise we're kind of even. It depends on who has the better day. Although I think that applies to every team, on a good weekend everyone could win the trophy, it just depends on who has the better calls, the better day. We really didn't have our map pool set during the season, now with best-of-threes it will be very different because of the vetoes. It'll definitely be harder, and they had a bootcamp prior to the LAN, but I think that from all the teams they're the second-hardest team to beat.

Young Ninjas is harder to beat because they're more structured as a team, mousesports sometimes struggle with their team play, but they fix it with individual skill. They have the better players than Young Ninjas, but Young Ninjas has the better team play. So if we just get the focus going and we don't get surprised by guys like torzsi or JDC we really have a good chance to get a win and advance in the upper bracket.

You said that on a good weekend any team could win this, but there's a big factor, which is the LAN factor. A lot of players here are not very experienced. How experienced are you guys? Will this be your first LAN?

For me it's the first LAN, the same goes for pr1metapz. The other three I think played some local LANs, but nowhere near the level of this LAN. When we went to the stage [during the media day] and we saw where we will play, it was really insane to see how how cool it is. We just looked at each other and said 'man, we really want to play here, we cannot wait, we really want to go on that stage and just play.'

I'm not nervous yet, I don't know how it will be on the day, but I'm just really, really motivated and hyped to play. I cannot wait.