With only hours to spare before the start of the 2024 VALORANT Challengers season in North America today, TSM has finally announced its return to the scene, bringing back a couple of last year’s starters and surrounding them with some top tier-two talent.
Johann “seven” Hernandez and Anthony “gMd” Guimond return to the black-and-white brand after competing for TSM in last year’s Challengers season, the org announced today. They’re flanked by two former Moist Moguls members, Alex “aproto” Protopapas and Tyler “sym” Porter. Rounding out the starting lineup is former FaZe member Kevin “poised” Ngo.
TSM is expected to fill the spot in the 12-team NA Challengers league occupied by BackOutsideBoys, one of six “core roster” teams that earned a spot or were invited back to compete. The offseason saw a lot of organizational turnover between the 2023 and 2024 seasons: G2 acquired The Guard’s roster when the latter’s organization shut down, Moist and Shopify partnered up, OREsports disbanded, and FaZe is currently nowhere to be seen.
While TSM waited until the last day of the excruciatingly long VALORANT Challengers offseason to do so, the org did fulfill a promise made back in July 2023 to re-enter the NA Challengers scene. The long offseason has been a major talking point within the tier-two scene as it’s made it harder for aspiring pro players to play VALORANT full-time.
There are still a handful of rosters competing in Challengers this year. During the 2023 season, Turtle Troop were the only free-agent roster that competed without an organization. This year, there are four between Turtle Troop, The Glazers, Thinking Men, and together we are terrific.
While TSM’s first match is scheduled for Wednesday, March 20 against M80, the first NA Challengers match of the 2024 season is set to begin today at 3pm CT when Moist x Shopify face Oxygen.
