With title aspirations, NRG’s s0m welcomes the pressure

When it comes to active partnerships between professional VALORANT players and North American VCT organizations, Sam “s0m” Oh and NRG are in rarefied air.

Since joining NRG VALORANT on Oct. 7, 2020, s0m has had 18 different teammates (including substitutes) and competed in at least 34 events and 146 series over his nearly 30-month-long stint with the program, according to Liquipedia.

Heading into VCT 2023, however, there’s perhaps no member on the NRG squad that’s been under more pressure to perform than the 20-year-old. On Sept. 30, 2022, days after securing its VCT Americas spot with Riot Games, NRG dropped Daniel “eeiu” Vucenovic, Ethan Arnold, Ian “tex” Botsch, and James “hazed” Cobb from its active roster. As the lone returner, s0m suddenly found himself role-swapping to controller full-time and standing alongside four of the VCT world’s most proven performers in the former OpTic Gaming core and former FunPlus Phoenix duelist star Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks.

Last week, s0m spoke with Dot Esports about the expectations that have surrounded him since the offseason and how he feels he’s been meeting them.

“Before Brazil, I needed to prove myself and prove to everyone that our team was good, including me,” s0m told Dot Esports. “We wanted to get first, but fifth-eighth [place], we can’t be sad about it. [It was] single elim.”

At LOCK//IN, s0m’s first international VCT tournament and event solely playing controller agents, the “W streamer” gave fans plenty of moments to get hyped about. The revamped NRG roster lived up to its billing, swiftly taking out EMEA’s KOI and Giants in impressive fashion before falling short in an instant-classic, map-three nail-biter to LOUD.

As a fellow VCT Americas representative, 100 Thieves head coach Michael “Mikes” Hockom spoke highly about what he saw from NRG at the kickoff tournament.

“I think the NRG core, it was hard to expect them to fail,” Mikes told Dot Esports. “I know people had questions about ardiis and s0m but I think those guys proved themselves as well at LOCK//IN, especially s0m pretty much silenced all the doubters about him.”

S0m explained that although he’s played the controller role on past NRG rosters from time to time, it’s certainly not been to this “high level.” Across three series at LOCK//IN, s0m posted a 212 average combat score, a 1.1 kill-death ratio, 138 average damage per round, and 82 assists. He believes he’s been “pretty good” on smokes so far but also emphasized that he wants to do better—an effort that hasn’t gone unnoticed by in-game leader Pujan “FNS” Mehta.

“Internally, for him specifically, he is already hard on himself,” FNS told Dot Esports. “He has high expectations for himself, which [with] any top player, you would want that from. As far as external expectations from other people, obviously, he has fans out there but he also has people that are looking at him to be the person that fails and I think that motivates him as well. Overall, we’re a pretty decent friend group/family so I know he’s comfortable with us.”

After a thrilling run with NRG in São Paulo and another month of practice, s0m wants fans to know the team’s expectations for the VCT Americas split are much higher than they were for LOCK//IN. His “not biased but it is” prediction for the top-three teams left standing when all is said and done are NRG, LOUD, and Leviatán.

“Especially after coming off of a fifth-eighth [place] loss, we’re definitely more hungry,” s0m said. “We want to get some wins in, get a streak going, get a trophy maybe.”

NRG begins its VCT Americas schedule against Leviatán on Monday, April 3, at 2pm CT.