Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #4 N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid beat Cloud9 Cloud9 North America Rank #7 Xeppaa Erick Bach v1c Victor Truong mitch Mitch Semago neT Michael Bernet OXY Francis Hoang on May 1 to advance to the grand finals of North America's Stage 2 Challengers Finals.

That win qualified Sentinels for Masters Reykjavik in Iceland. Cloud9 Blue were sent to the lower bracket to play against Version1 Version1 Inactive for the second and final spot to represent North America in Iceland.

Sentinels had just won Masters 1. They were the North American favorites heading into Stage 2. But neither C9B nor V1 were expected to make it this far, let alone guarantee that one of them would qualify for Masters 2. Neither team even made it to a main event of a single Stage 1 Challengers tournament. Yet the two were set to duke it out for tickets to Valorant's first international LAN.

V1 won the match.

“It feels good to be here representing NA, especially for us who have constantly been the underdogs, even in our own region,” Erik "penny" Penny said. “I feel like we have cemented ourselves as one of the best teams in NA, even if people do not want to believe it.”

Version1's underdog status is in part because the team is so new. V1 signed the roster, which had only existed since January, earlier this year, and two of the players on the team made the switch from CS:GO to full-time Valorant at the beginning of the year.

They just didn't have the time to prove themselves.

Even in Stage 2, V1 barely had a chance to flex their muscles. When the team qualified for Stage 2 Challengers 1, it needed to go just 2-2 to finish in the top four and automatically qualify for the Stage 2 Challengers Finals. It earned those two victories against Built By Gamers Built By Gamers Inactive and a Cloud9 Blue squad that was still fresh off a shaky Stage 1.

So when Challengers Finals started, Version1 wasn't on many people's radars as a threat to qualify for Iceland. But then after losing to Sentinels to begin the tournament, the team defeated the recently upgraded Andbox Andbox Inactive oderus Chad Miller mummAy Anthony DiPaolo Lear Dayton Akau Jonaaa6 Jonard Penaflor vice Daniel Kim and NRG Esports NRG Esports North America Rank #1 FiNESSE Pujan Mehta s0m Sam Oh Verno Andrew Maust mada Adam Pampuch Ethan Ethan Arnold squads. It defeated one of the tournament favorites in Envy Envy Inactive Marved Jimmy Nguyen Victor Victor Wong crashies Austin Roberts FiNESSE Pujan Mehta yay Jaccob Whiteaker next. After that was the team's victory over Cloud9 Blue.

But even after that run, V1 still retains an underdog status. Maxim "wippie" Shepelev, the team's sentinel player, was unable to secure his visa for Iceland because of his student visa status in the United States. That has left V1 competing in Iceland without their normal starting roster and relying on Jamal "jammyz" Bangash to fill his big shoes.

“I think we are definitely coming in with no pressure, playing with a sub and all,” Penny said. “Even with these circumstances, I think we all still expect to play well and give a good showing.”

While it would normally be stressful to prepare for the biggest tournament in a game's history without your full lineup, V1 has been taking it in stride. It helps that jammyz has played with Anthony "vanity" Malaspina and Zellsis before. It also helps that jammyz has matched what the team would expect from wippie.

“jammyz fits in well with the team,” Penny said. “He's a very cool guy outside of the game and meshes well with everyone. As for the playstyle, he is basically just filling wippie's role one-to-one.”

Obviously it's not ideal to miss any one of your players to issues outside of the team's control, but V1 has seemed to find the best replacement they could given the difficult circumstances.

The team is currently working hard to overcome the setback, but that's not outside of the normal for this team.

“I think we can credit our recent success to our hard work,” Penny said. “Even though everyone here has a lot of talent, we had to constantly adapt and change the way we played to make it to where we are now and I think that is something we can be proud of.”

So this is just another adaptation for the roster. And the team's underdog status is just par for the course, as well. It will be just like any other Valorant tournament for them, except they'll be playing in a local arena instead of online and will be against the world's best teams instead of just their region's best.

Can they translate that past success to this new venue against new opponents? Only time will tell.

Just know these underdogs are capable of a bite far worse than their bark.