T1 signs 4 players for VALORANT academy team

Less than two weeks after the official launch of VALORANT, an esports organization is signing academy team players.

T1, the home of one of the most successful League of Legends teams of all time, has signed four VALORANT players that will comprise its academy team, the organization announced today. The roster will include Haydin “ZerG” Gordon, Kurtis “Kurt” Gallo, Eeiu, and Rara.

ZerG formerly competed for Fusion University, the Philadelphia Fusion’s former Overwatch Contenders team. He signed with them at the age of 14 in 2018 and played for the team for about nine months before retiring from OW to play Apex Legends for T1. During this time, he played with Kurt on T1’s Apex team.

With these signings, T1 has officially picked up nine VALORANT players over the past few months. The organization first signed former CS:GO pro Brax on March 9 and followed that with signings of Keven “AZK” Larivière, Austin “crashies” Roberts, Victor “food” Wong, and Skadoodle. T1 also signed a head coach for its VALORANT team, Daniel “fRod” Montaner.

While T1 has been scooping up talent early on, some organizations, like Team Liquid, have not signed a VALORANT team yet. Even 100 Thieves, which hosted a tournament during the closed beta like T1, has only announced one player signing so far.

Riot has stayed tight-lipped about what the future of VALORANT esports will look like. But some fans and analysts believe it will resemble League‘s esports scene, where Riot runs all of the top-tier leagues and tournaments in numerous regions.