zAAz: "I belong here"

zAAZ helped Imperial fe stay on top of the women's circuit.

The women's scene was stunned after six-time ESL Impact champions Nigma Galaxy were left without organizational support, with the team also bringing in Zainab "⁠zAAz⁠" Turkie in place of Ksenia "⁠vilga⁠" Kluenkova at the time.

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Nigma Galaxy lineup to depart organization; replace vilga with zAAz

The move was a surprise considering the success the roster enjoyed during their time together, but coach Reinis "⁠hyskeee⁠" Grīnbergs said that "a breath of fresh air was necessary to evolve, and I am sure this is the right move for both parties" at the time of the announcement.

The team competed under the Pigeons name and faced a tough challenge in NAVI Javelins, but zAAz and company made sure to win their seventh consecutive ESL Impact title mere days after signing for Imperial Valkyries.

After the grand final victory, zAAz sat down with HLTV to talk about their road to the title, her integration into the team, and the state of women's CS.

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Such a convincing win again, you only lost one map on the way to the title. Tell me about the tournament from your perspective, was it just as convincing as it looked from the outside? What was behind this victory?

We've been grinding so much. It's been [some] rough months, I came new to the team, had a lot of pressure on me, grinded a lot, got to know everyone, and it took time to build this atmosphere and teamplay that we have today. I had high expectations, I did, because we came here with full confidence. It showed, right?

Leading up to this tournament it looked like NAVI Javelins were going to take the fight to you, they won the last couple of online tournaments. I saw there was some smack talk going back and forth like, 'Do it to us on LAN,' and obviously they didn't quite show up. Was it a surprise for you that that's what transpired in the end?

It was a surprise, yeah. What happened here in Dallas, it was very surprising to me. I never expected Let her cook to be in the final, it was Fluxo or NAVI [for me]. But anything can happen, it's CS, what can I say.

About this online [comment], we've been beating them, they've been beating us. It's very hard to always play the same team, it gets very difficult, and on LAN it's always different.

You were talking about joining this team and that being kind of a rough time. You came into this team and it was by the far most dominant in the women's scene, what did you see about them that makes them so dominant, to not let everybody else catch up? Because it's been pretty much dominant wins across the board for two years, so what have you been observing about this team that makes them special?

What makes them special is that they have confidence, they have experience, and I'm the kind of player that also has experience and a lot of confidence and I belong in a team that has experience and confidence.

I cannot be in... like it's hard for me, I tried at least, being in a team where you don't have a lot of confidence, you don't have a lot of experience, and I had a lot of pressure on me. When you have pressure you cannot play your own game, and obviously who wouldn't want to join the best team in the world, right? Amazing girls, outside and inside the game, I have no comments. I belong here.

You were talking about pressure, is it also because of this being such a controversial move for this team, to get rid of vilga, bring you in? That came as a surprise to a lot of people because of how dominant they were. Does this win and last six months feel like vindication for you?

Yeah, it does, definitely. It was a lot of pressure on me, thankfully I can handle the pressure because I've been around for so long, but joining a winning team is a lot of pressure. Maybe someone who doesn't have a lot of experience would think, 'Oh my god, I have a lot of pressure, I have to win,' and then you choke. But in this case it was like, I'm just going to get in, do my fucking job, and show who the fuck I am.

You were looking for an organization probably longer than we would've expected, this is the best team in the women's scene and we would've thought that somebody would just come and grab you. Was it a surprise to you? Walk me through the last six months and what happened behind the scenes.

I don't want to get into too many details honestly, but it was very rough finding an organization. This never happened in my entire career, it is very surprising. I don't know if it was also because Nigma dropped the team pretty late, mid-February, and it's very hard for other organizations to plan the budget. It always has to be months before, or at least before the new year, so it was also a big issue that they dropped them so late and we couldn't find an org. But we managed to find one, and I think it's well deserved too.

Can you tell me about Imperial a bit, it's a bit of a surprise since it's a Brazilian organization, they've only had Brazilian teams so far. How did you get in touch, how did this happen?

My coach was in touch with them, they were very interested. They're happy to have us in the team and they want to develop the CS community, or female CS, in Brazil.

This is also something that we are going to focus on, we're going to be in Brazil, play tournaments there too, and get more female players into the scene of course. So far it's been going great, they're very nice people and I'm looking forward to working with them.

I'm just curious how it's been in the past half a year, we've seen some organizations pull back with their investment into women's CS. We've also seen impact scale back a little bit, for Asian teams they don't have anything to play for half of a year. We've seen Tradeit come into the space and put on some more tournaments, so what do you think about the state of the scene at the moment and where it's heading?

It's a good question, this is mostly like inside info that you can get, but I don't know. I'm just hoping that it's going to get better because this is a big reason why I switched to VALORANT.

It's because there were no competitions, it wasn't because I enjoyed the game or I loved the game, I love CS, this is my passion, this is my love, but I didn't have any choice because there were no tournaments.

Then I get back to CS, I see ESL Impact, Julia [juliano] gets back to CS, and then suddenly they drop a fucking tournament like... what the fuck is this? It's very very sad because a lot of organizations also dropped their teams, and I cannot do anything more than just hope.

I wanted to ask about your relationship with juliano. You played with her for such a long time in CS, went to VALORANT with her, then came back with her. You had to split ways and now you're kind of rivals again, how has it been to adjust to that?

First of all, if I'm going to be honest, it wasn't the plan from the start that we were going to split. I don't want to get into details, but we didn't have any choice. We had to find our own teams and we respected that, and no matter what, Julia is one of my best friends.

I've known her for 10 years, we even have the same tattoo. Our relationship will never change. It's just different now because you cannot talk about CS the same way because we're in different teams, but I will always cheer for her, she's going to cheer for me. We still have good contact. She's like a sister to me.