Senna: "I keep coming back to CS because it's more fun for me"

US representative Charissa 'Senna' Hoang is a fairly experienced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player, her first visits to LAN events date back to 2014. Dust2.us editor spoke with Senna from Please Send Help at ESL Impact League Season 1 after the 1st match of the roster. As a result of the event, her team failed to qualify from the group, took 5-6th place and earned $7,000. Below are excerpts from the interview.

About the first match against FURIA.fe, which Please Send Help lost 16:2:

I think there were just a few nerves. We learn to calm down, relax, take our time and just watch what our opponents are doing and then counteract them. Now it's all a rewarding experience as most of our team is on LAN for the first time, it's a big event and they've never seen anything like it before, especially in the female scene. So it's a fairly new experience for most people.

On how she came to CS:

I started playing Counter-Strike in 2003 when it was still version 1.5. Before that, I played competitive Team Fortress for about 3 years, and then the scene began to die. And then everyone said “Let's play Counter-Strike, let's play something else”. So, of course, some of my friends moved to CS, and I said “okay, let's play together”. So we almost immediately joined the Cyberathlete Amateur League and started playing matches there, and we had fun. This is how it all started, at least something similar to competitive CS.

On expectations from the tournament:

We will just try to show the best result as we have been preparing. We came together as a team faster than most of the other members, because they are on stage longer, so they have organizations. Our five formed in February, so we had a bit of practice, but I hope we do well. Obviously FURIA didn't work out for us, but in the case of whoever we play next, like ATK, we're going to train all night and try to get ready, and then we'll see what we can do.

Recall that ESL Impact League Season 1 was held from June 3rd to 5th in Dallas, Texas. 8 teams competed for $123,000 in prize money. The victory was won by the Nigma Galaxy Female team, which brought them $50,000.