One of the greatest AWPers to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is stepping away from the competitive scene.
Cloud9 announced today that its world-class AWPer, Tyler “skadoodle” Latham, is officially retiring from CS:GO esports. He will step down from the North American roster once the team’s new fifth player arrives—although Cloud9 has not said when this will be.
Related: Shroud officially retires from competitive CS:GO, leaves Cloud9
Skadoodle is the third Cloud9 player to move away from competition in the past two years, after his former teammates Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert and Michael “shroud” Grzesiek. Their retirements aren’t as dramatic as skadoodle’s, however, because n0thing and shroud were replaced on the C9 roster at the time before slowly backing away from the competitive scene with their sights on other projects, like streaming and content creation.
With the C9 organization, Skadoodle was an integral part of many historic lineups, including those that had legendary players n0thing, shroud, Sean “sgares” Gares, Ryan “fREAKAZOiD” Abadir, Jake “Stewie2k” Yip, Tarik Celik, Will “RUSH” Wierzba, and Tim “autimatic” Ta. Skadoodle helped bring North American Counter-Strike to the forefront of the international scene in 2018 after years of doubt and “NA CS” memes from the community.
In January 2018, Skadoodle was named MVP of the ELEAGUE Boston Major, following Cloud9’s massive upset in the grand finals against FaZe Clan. C9 defeated them in map three Inferno after coming back from 11-15 and ending the map 22-19. Skadoodle topped the server at 26 kills per map in that series—possibly the best performance of his career.
Following the Boston Major, C9 struggled to find their footing in international events, resulting in the departures of Stewie2k and Tarik. They left behind skadoodle, RUSH, and autimatic, who are now playing with former Fnatic duo Robin “flusha” Ronnquist and Maikil “golden” Selim. Now that skadoodle is retiring, the quartet will need to find a new AWPer.
Skadoodle is also known for his controversial past with iBuyPower, being the only player on the team to not receive a lifetime ban from Valve-sanctioned competition. His iBP teammates—Braxton “swag” Pierce, Josh “steel” Nissan, Keven “AZK” Lariviere, and Sam “DaZeD” Marine—had their careers cut short by the scandal, due to their involvement in match-fixing. If skadoodle were directly implicated in the fixing, his years of competition would’ve never happened.
NA’s most beloved AWPer leaves behind a community that cherishes his soft-spoken personality and charisma.
