Team Vitality are CS:GO champions following their offline event debut at DreamHack Open Atlanta.
Led by Nathan “NBK” Schmitt, the new French lineup worked their way to their first title as a team. Vitality took down Fragsters and many of North America’s best, including Rogue Gaming and compLexity Gaming, on their way to the title. Eighteen-year-old prospect Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut put on star performances throughout the entire weekend during Vitality’s championship run.
Related: Team Vitality enters CS:GO, signs a French roster featuring NBK, apEX, and ZywOo
After narrowly losing their initial match to Ghost Gaming, Vitality closed out their time in the DreamHack Atlanta group stage with a 4-1 win-loss map record. They defeated Fragsters in the elimination match (Dust 16-7 and Cache 16-10) and Rogue Gaming in the decider match (Nuke 16-6 and Overpass 16-10) with 2-0 scorelines.
In the semifinals, Vitality bested coL in three maps. Despite a close Dust II loss at 16-12, the French side destroyed coL on Train (16-6) and Nuke (16-8). ZywOo had monstrous games on Train and Nuke with 31 kills in both maps, putting Vitality into the grand finals vs. Luminosity Gaming.
The finale of the three-day event was fairly lackluster as Vitality crushed LG on Mirage (16-4) and Overpass (16-6). Dan “apEX” Madesclaire gave ZywOo a break as the team hard carry for a series with 24 kills per map, but ZywOo still earned himself a nice ace during an eco round on Overpass. The young gun finished the event with an insane 1.49 HLTV 2.0 rating.
This championship win at DreamHack Atlanta was considered to be must-win for the French roster, since there wasn’t much top-tier CS:GO talent in the team pool. Now that they’ve found their footing on LAN, it’ll be interesting to see how the French powerhouse performs in future offline events, especially with ZywOo spearheading the frag columns.
