One of North America’s best Apex Legends players retires from competitive play

One of the longest tenured and famed North American Apex Legends players has decided to retire after three years of professional play. The Apex Legends Global Series 2022 Split One in North America marked Aidan “rocker” Grodin’s last tournament as a professional Apex competitor. The announcement came from a public post on his twitter account, where he recounted his career and cited burnout from the game as his chief reason for leaving the competitive scene.

Rocker first started playing Apex and making compilations on his Youtube channel in 2019, making videos as early as Oct.12. His talent would lead to getting picked up by an organization on May 20, 2020, when he became the newest member of NRG. He became the third member of the squad alongside Nathan “Nafen” Nguyen and current Spacestation member Joseph “Frexs” Sanchez.

NRG would immediately find success by winning the ALGS Online Tournament No. 6 on May 30, 2020. This trend of success in North America would continue, as NRG would go on to win the 2020 NA Winter Circuit Playoffs, before finishing in tenth place at the 2021 ALGS Championship.  NRG also won the SCARZ CUP, Esports Arena Series E Seasons 3 and 4, the SteelSeries Prime Cup, and more tournaments in 2021. 

However, NRG would not perform as well going into next year, with middling performances and failure to earn as many first-place finishes as 2021. Despite playing well in Pro League, the ALGS 2022 Split Two Playoffs and Championship would be rocker’s last major tournaments with NRG, where the team placed seventh and ninth place, respectively. Rocker would then part with NRG after the Championship, acting as a free agent for three months until he was scouted as the third for another North American team.

On August 9, 2022, rocker joined Cloud9 for the ALGS 2022 Split One Pro League in North America, joining Paris “StayNaughty” Gouzoulis and Zach Mazer. However, C9 would not perform up to expectations, missing the regional playoffs for the split with a 22nd place finish, and failing to qualify for the Split One playoffs LAN in the process. Midway through the split, Cloud9 would also release the roster due to budget cutbacks on Dec. 4, with the roster finishing out the split as ORN. 

Rocker finishes his career as a competitive Apex player as one of North America’s most decorated, having played for two separate orgs over the course of three years with many domestic accolades in his established career.