kaahSENSEI: "It's not the time to say that we are the best"

FURIA's AWPer believes that more needs to be done before the Brazilians can say they are the best in women's Counter-Strike.

After besting Imperial Valkyries on LAN for the first time at the Rainhas do Clutch FERJEE Finals in December 2024, FURIA fe had their sights set on doing the same at the ESL Impact League Finals.

The Brazilian side repeated their Rio de Janeiro success by taking down six-time ESL Impact League champions Imperial Valkyries in the semi-finals in Dallas, and then followed up with a 2-1 win over Supernova Comets to raise the ESL Impact League Season 7 Finals trophy.

Date	Matches
ESL Impact League Season 7 Finals
22/05/2025	FURIA fe Finished 13:10 DMS	Match
22/05/2025	FURIA fe Finished 13:6 Supernova Comets	Match
24/05/2025	FURIA fe Finished 2:1 Imperial Valkyries	Match
25/05/2025	Supernova Comets Finished 1:2 FURIA fe	Match

Just after her team's victory over Supernova Comets, Karina "⁠kaahSENSEI⁠" Takahashi spoke with HLTV regarding winning ESL Impact League for the first time, the tough first map of the grand final, and her thoughts on the skill disparity between her team and other teams in Brazil.

You can read the interview below or listen on Spotify.

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We're here with kaahSENSI after a hard-fought win over Supernova Comets; you guys are the champions of ESL Impact League, how are you feeling?

We're feeling amazing! We always wanted this, we always lost in second place and now we finally did it.

There were a surprising amount of Brazilian fans out in the crowd today, how did it feel to win on stage in front of them?

Brazilian fans are amazing, they always cheer for Brazil. Here in Dallas we already know that [there] are a lot of Brazilians here. We already expected that there would be a Brazilian crowd, and it's really really good because we feel like home.

You had a really difficult first map to start the series; empathy had 35 kills. How did you begin to recover after that map?

She had the map of her life I think (laughs). She played really really well, it was really hard to counter and play against. We just tried to forget the past map, because we didn't have the chance... we had the chance actually, but we played very well and we knew that so we didn't really put any bad things into this first map. Just forget this map and focus on the next one.

So you've beaten Imperial Valkyries on LAN twice, and you just won the Impact League Finals. Do you think you guys are the best women's team in Counter-Strike right now?

No, no. I think we need to win more and play more, because [Imperial Valkyries] won every single Impact that we had. It's not the time to say that we are the best team, we are not yet.

More to be done?

Yes, more to be done.

Outside of Impact League you also play some qualifiers in Brazil and the results aren't quite as good. What is separating you from the men's teams, and what do you need to do to start matching them?

We can't play a lot of matches that FURIA is already, so we can play some qualifiers, but cannot play Major qualifiers for example, or Pro League. It's something that, if we could play, it could be better, because we would have more prac and we would play against the bests team in Brazil.

We don't have a lot of chances to play against them because they are playing in some leagues we are not, and the qualifiers that we could face them [in] we can't play. I think this is one of the things that separates us for now.