Yam steps down from Renegades

A core member Renegades’ powerhouse Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team has stepped down from the roster citing personal reasons.

Yaman “yam” Ergenekon played with his Australian Renegades teammates for almost three years. He was also one of the original players to move to North America when the team was bought out by Boston Celtics forward Jonas Jerebko in August last year.

Renegades’ management will be supporting him during his time back in Australia, the organization said on Twitter. Whether this marks the end for yam’s time with Renegades has not yet been confirmed.

Renegades’ CS: GO team manager, Chris Orfanellis‏, said in a tweet that the team will be using Michael “Uber” Stapells as the stand-in for yam—along with Simon “atter” Atterstam, their stand-in for Ricky “Rickeh” Mulholland, who left two weeks ago to join CLG. This will be one of the most storied teams Uber has played on before, and his skills will be tested a great deal at their upcoming ESL Pro League matches against the likes of Selfless Gaming and SK Gaming. Uber formerly played with compLexity, who are currently 3-11 in the ESL Pro League with the most amount of matches played at 14.

The team’s temporary line-up is as below.

Justin “jks” Savage

Aaron “AZR” Ward

Karlo “USTILO” Pivac

Simon “atter” Atterstam (stand-in)

Michael “Uber” Stapells (stand-in)

Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunović (coach)

Yam, the former AWPer in the team, took over the in-game leader role from spunj when he retired in June 2016 and now features on the analyst desk for the ESL Pro League. He had played with spunj and jks since Vox Eminor back in 2015.

The Renegades team looks to be on a knife’s edge with two stand-ins. If the team wants to remain a dominant Australian force in North America, they are going to have to put in the hours and pull out the stops in their upcoming matches.