Sonic: "Once M80 came to fruition, a lot of teams in NA popped up and put in the work"

The South African rifler spoke about bouncing back from Wildcard's day one blowout and sharing his experience with younger players.

Wildcard have distinguished themselves as a North American team on the rise within the last few months, making deep runs in regional qualifiers and going flawless through the NA Americas RMR qualifier to earn their ticket to Monterrey.

The experience of veteran in-game leader Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz and promise offered by their two young prospects, Keller "⁠SLIGHT⁠" Nilan and Josh "⁠JBa⁠" Barutt, made the team an exciting dark horse coming into the RMR, but things quickly took a sour turn. A demoralizing 1-13 loss at the hands of RED Canids sent Wildcard down to the 0-1 elimination pool, but the team looked entirely revitalized on day two as they dispatched of BESTIA 2-0 to keep their tournament hopes alive.

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How Wildcard stacked the deck with JBa

The relative ease with which victory came was in large part thanks to, Aran "⁠Sonic⁠" Groesbeek, whose wealth of experience playing high-pressure LANs was on full display as he mustered a 1.74 rating in the series. HLTV spoke to the South African rifler after the game to discuss how the team quelled doubts that might have arisen after such a poor start, his role as one of the more experienced members on the team, balancing his full-time schooling with competition after his return to the game, and the state of North America now.

Date	Matches
PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 Americas RMR
03/03/2024	M80 17:00 Wildcard	Match

If you do not see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the full interview here.

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A big bounce-back win today. Yesterday was obviously not the start you would have wanted, but your performance here was really strong and you got the 2-0. Tell me how that feels after such a flat start.

Yesterday's loss was extremely difficult on the team because we've been doing a lot of hard work and prep. We had two bootcamps prior and we did extremely well in the NA RMR qualifier, so coming here, we expected as a team and as individuals that we were going to come in swinging, that we were going to come in and put numbers up on the board. To lose out the way we did was extremely demoralizing as a team and as individuals too.

I think some people started having doubts in their heads like, 'Damn, are we really just going to get eliminated straight away? This isn't what we came here to do.' We had high expectations and stuff, but coming into today's game, we were a completely different team. I think that just shows the grit of some of the players we have on this roster, obviously it's a mix of newcomers as well as experienced players. Just to show that we could bounce back like that and forget about yesterday's game where we got absolutely demolished and put up the showing that we did today is something special. I'm happy I performed really well, the guys were having fun out there and that, at the end of the day, is what the game is about, right? So I'm very happy.

You said that maybe some people were having doubts after that, was there a conversation that helped change that, or what do you think contributed toward turning that around?

When you come off a loss like that, I think it's very important to just leave it and let it simmer for a while, because your human instinct is to start blaming things or pointing fingers at stuff like, 'Why did we lose like that? What happened?' But if you just take a step back, chill, come back, talk about it, and then just focus up on the next one, then that really sets the pace for us for the next day.

We did speak about it and we kinda just blew it off. We know we're still in it and we have to play like we're still in it. I don't think the guys will ever stop believing. I know it's a dream for some of them, it's a dream for myself too because I unfortunately have missed out on a lot of Majors, and so it's a very big dream of mine and I think we can do some damage here.

I need to clear up some allegations: Was this an HLTV curse after the JBa article came out?

(laughs) Yeah, definitely. Nah, I'm kidding. I think it's just that new teams typically get into this rhythm of playing not to lose, they're so afraid of losing that you just don't play your own game, you don't play to win. Because that's what it's about, you play to win, you don't focus on the other team, you just focus on yourself and when you sit down and you play, you do what you do best and do it how you know it.

Today we did that, myself especially, I did that and I'm happy about that, I'm happy that the young guns got to experience that on LAN because that's a very important lesson. Losing like that and seeing why you lost like that, sometimes you just have to pull your nuts out and go.

When I interviewed JBa for that feature, he said that talking with you has helped him a lot, that you've shared a lot of experience and knowledge and talked him through that. Can you tell me more about your role on the team as that more experienced player?

For my role on the team, I think I have much more of a meta understanding of the game since I was the one most recently out of pro, but then I came back and substituted for COL at BLAST and that other tournament. That, combined with Peter [stanislaw]'s experience, is very good for the team because Peter has the basics of Counter-Strike drilled into him. He's a very solid baseline for a team, and I can bring that flash, those gimmicks and small things that make a good team great.

That works extremely well for us and with the young guns, they're insanely gifted mechanically, and they're very open to learning. Everyone has got such a good attitude on the team. There's nothing worse in a team than where you have a player that's uncoachable. In this team, first and foremost everyone is friends, we all listen to each other, we all hear each other out, and we're open to having the hard conversations that perhaps other teams aren't having and we have a very mature take on those conversations.

In my previous teams, I was at the same experience level as a lot of the people I was playing with, and now in this team I've come into a new phase of my CS career where I'm the experienced guy around and I've got the youngsters around me. It's a very interesting dynamic, but it's working well so far.

Talking about your return, you left the game, started pursuing your schooling. Even when you joined this team, you said you were just coming in to help and that you'd have to go back to school. What's the status around that, and can you walk me through your time away and coming back to play in events like this again?

I'm still a full-time college student, like I've got an assignment due later today (laughs) so I've got to get that done. Initially, maybe I thought that I didn't have the time to balance my school and my CS, and that may be true at a certain level of Counter-Strike where perhaps, if I had to be situated in Europe for half the year, that would not work for me.

But currently, Wildcard has been quite accommodating with me, and I've been working hard with my schedule, notifying my professors about the timelines and things, so we've been managing my schedule pretty well. I've had to pull a few strings here and there to make it work, but at the end of the day I'm really happy that they took a chance on me.

I miss Counter-Strike, and I don't think anyone truly leaves Counter-Strike, it pulls you back one way or another and I've been roped back in a couple of times. Sometimes it's a bit too sweet to say no, but other than that, I just love the game and I love competition because it's a part of me, and I'll never let that part of me die.

Each time you've come back, it's been to a slightly different environment. North America has evolved, it went down, now it's coming back up it seems. What is it like playing in the region now and with some of the players you're seeing come up?

You know, I really hate it when I see comments on HLTV saying that NA is so behind and stuff, but it's really not like that. When we go and we scrim in Europe, a lot of the time, like nine times out of ten, we are beating these teams in scrims and stuff. The only difference is that these Europeans have so much experience on LAN and in tournaments because they constantly have tournaments. In NA it's not like that, we don't have that many LANs or opportunities to play LANs, so it's difficult for these players to come up and show up at LAN once or twice a year and prove themselves against these teams that have just been grinding LANs their whole lives.

I think NA is at a very good level right now, perhaps just after COVID it died out a little bit, but I think it all started with the iteration of M80 and once they came to fruition, a lot of teams started popping up and putting in the work. These players who are leading these teams are a good mix of experience and inexperience, and we have a really good level of hungry players who really want that, and that's a dangerous thing in competition. It's also a very good thing in America now with so many people competing against each other for the few spots that are available, it raises the bar and it's perhaps what we needed. Sooner than later, perhaps we catch up to EU.

After this, you're 1-1, backs are still against the wall just because of the format here. It's best-of-threes now and you have a chance to still make it through, but there's Liquid who've also been knocked down, there are teams who people didn't predict to be in the 1-1 or 0-1 pool that make it a hard road to the Major. How do you feel going forward?

Well, first of all, I think the format is extremely stupid. I don't think it's fair in the best-of-one matchups, because a best-of-one could be decided by who ate a better breakfast, it's so hit or miss and it's extremely difficult for the teams here. Some teams get lucky in the best-of-one, and in my opinion it's not a fair format for a lot of teams, but it is what it is. It's something you can't control and you just have to put your head down and deal with it.

Regardless of the fact that we were knocked down yesterday and we came back, we're now in the 1-1 pool, I think we're still very confident. Even if we had to play teams that people maybe think are the favorites, like Liquid and stuff, we've beaten Liquid before and we've gotten extremely close against them, so we're confident and we don't really mind who we play. Maybe as long as it's not Complexity (laughs) but they won, so we won't.

Just touching on the games you've been playing online, some of the qualifiers have come really close, but you tend to fall just short of qualifying for some of these big events. What do you need to get over the line, is it this kind of LAN experience that you're missing or where do you stand on that?

When I spoke to the guys, it's usually... every player in a team has one thing that they have to work on, right? There's always something that someone should be working on, on themselves, out of the game or within the game. That one thing can be detrimental to a team, such as maybe someone who struggles with communication, or struggles with attitude, or with losing and they shut down, and I think perhaps it could have been those things that let us fall short at the finish line.

We let them get the better of ourselves, but we've been improving on those things week in and week out with the guys, and they're doing phenomenal work on themselves. I'm happy about that. In the most recent qualifier, that was a bit unfortunate, we were a little bit jetlagged and I think we flew home and had to play the qualifiers on the same day. All of us were sick with Serbia flu, so we weren't in our greatest headspace. I played really poorly, I think if I played a bit better we would have actually won that one, but it is what it is, who cares? We move past, go next.