The top spot at the DreamHack Open this past weekend was claimed by Extra Salt which includes three South African members.
Extra Salt is an esports team of six members three of which hail from South Africa including their coach.
This past Sunday Extra Salt defeated paiN Gaming 3-0 in the Grand Final of the open, after clearing the playoffs without losing a single map on their journey to the top.
The DreamHack March 2021: North America kicked off with two groups of four teams. The top two teams from each would advance to the semi-finals. Extra Salt’s Semi-final was played against High Coast Sports, where they then proceeded to the finals.
Their most monumental moment came when they staged a comeback to win 10 straight points after being 2-8 down on inferno then taking the map 16-12.
They claimed the $35,000 prize and 100 Pro Tour points. They also qualify for the Intel Extreme Masters Summer 2021 from the 3rd to the 13th of June.
In a post-match interview, Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek said, “Words can’t describe the win, it’s been much waited on.”
Extra Salt is an American esports team founded in December last year. The team then acquired Cloud9’s South African members to bring their number to 6 active players.
The team is comprised of three South-Africans including Johnny Theodosiou (JT), Aran Groesbeek (Sonic), and Tiaan Coertzen (T.c-Coach). The three other members include Justin Coakley (FaNG) from Canada, Edgar Maldonado (MarKE) from Mexico, and lastly Joshua Ohm (oSee) from the U.S.A.
The three south-Africans were part of Cloud9 Gaming which was previously suspended because they broke COVID-19 guidelines.
The team is headed by Daniel van Flymen “Gandalf”, who was the founder of Damage Control, which is one of the first South African Counter-Strike teams to compete overseas.
With this new win, Extra Salt has secured its position as the no.1 CS: GO team in North America. The team now has its sites on Europe and are planning to travel there in short order to compete in the FunSpark ULTI 2020 Europe Final from the 19th to the 26th of April.
The team will also make appearances at DreamHack Masters Spring and IEM Summer in the next few months.
It is always awesome to see our fellow countrymen doing so well representing South Africa in the global sensation that is esports. We will be routing for ExtraSalt as they embark on the new journey to become the best CS: GO team in the world.