Early slip doesn’t phase BreakThru in NA VALORANT Challengers qualifying clash with Stewie2K, The Nation

Against a stacked team full of star power, the equally dangerous BreakThru VALORANT roster withstood the red hot star-studded The Nation roster tonight, claiming the first open qualifier spot in the NA VALORANT Challengers League.

The BreakThru roster may not have the massive star power of The Nation, which features a trio of some of the biggest competitive FPS names in Jacky “Stewie2K” Yip, Matthew “Wardell” Yu, and Braxton “brax” Pierce, but they do have the distinction of the being the first team to make it out of open quals.

BreakThru features a handful of players who participated in VCT over these past couple of years for the likes of Ghose, FaZe, Luminosity, TSM Academy, and others. The roster stars Brady “thief” Dever, Alex “aproto” Protopapas, Brock “brawk” Somerhalder, Xavier “flyuh” Carlson, and Tyler “sym” Porter.

The team didn’t lose a single series throughout the 256-team qualifier, which switched to a double-elimination format after single-elimination play reduced the number of teams from 256 to 32.

In the double-elimination portion of the bracket, the team didn’t lose a single map until facing The Nation, but looked to be in trouble after losing decisively on map one on Fracture, 13-1.

But BreakThru did not break, and it was brawk who rallied the team with two straight top-of-the-scoreboard performances with Sova on both Haven (13-9) and Ascent (13-10). For the BreakThru players, the job is done, and they can look forward to the start of the NA VALORANT Challengers League on Feb. 1.

For The Nation, they are down but they are not out. They move down to the lower bracket, and if they don’t win their next game, they’ll be out of this qualifier completely and will need to regroup in time for the final last-chance qualifier next week.