Former Cloud9 CS:GO player and current head coach of ex-Gaimin Gladiators Kory “SEMPHIS” Friesen is organizing crowdfunding to help his team attend a boot camp in Germany before the IEM Rio Major Regional Major Ranking (RMR) Americas kicks off in October.
Ex-Gaimin Gladiators were one of the six CS:GO teams who earned a spot in the IEM Rio Major Americas RMR via the North American open qualifiers. Should the boot camp become viable, ex-Gaimin Gladiators would spend five days in Germany with the goal of adjusting to the European time zones, practicing against better teams, and learning the European meta before they attend the Americas RMR, according to SEMPHIS.
SEMPHIS, David “cynic” Polste, Danny “cxzi” Strzelczyk, Brendan “Bwills” Williams, Jeorge “jeorgesnorts” Endicott, and Dominick “JazzPimp” Dimpfel parted ways with the Gaimin Gladiators organization in August and have been orgless ever since.
“I also want to make it clear, we don’t expect any donations from anyone,” SEMPHIS said. “This is pure to help us grow as a team as we’re trying to gather as much money as we can to make this work, traveling in Europe is expensive without support.”
The crowdfunding organized by SEMPHIS has raised $840 CAD so far, according to its GoFundMe page, and is aiming to raise a total of $10,000 CAD. The highest donation at the moment, $300 CAD, was made by Evil Geniuses’ director of athletics and ELEAGUE Boston Major winner Soham “valens” Chowdhury.
There are also other initiatives in the community to help ex-Gaimin Gladiators make it. The in-game leader of Imperial and back-to-back Major winner in 2016 Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo told SEMPHIS he would stream this week to help them gather resources. The godfather of the Brazilian scene has done this in the past and went through crowdfunding himself when he was still playing for KaBuM.TD in 2014.
The Americas RMR will run from Oct. 5 to 9 in Stockholm, Sweden, and six of the 16 CS:GO teams in attendance will advance to IEM Rio Major in November.
