Seattle Surge win CDL Major 3

The Seattle Surge have the 2022 Call of Duty League Major 3, taking down the Atlanta FaZe in an eight-map thriller.

The win marks the first title of the CDL era for the Surge, and shows that the rebuild the organization underwent in the offseason is moving in the right direction.

Seattle Surge win CDL Major

For the first two years of the CDL, the Seattle Surge were one of the league’s worst teams. They struggled to find any meaningful traction and never came close to winning a Major. In light of this, the organization decided to rebuild ahead of the 2022 season under new head coach Sam “Fenix” Spencer.

The team Fenix assembled favored youth and untapped potential, bringing Makenzie “Mack” Kelley from New York, Daunte “Sib” Gray from Atlanta, and introducing Australian phenom Amer “Pred” Zulbeari to the North American scene. The team was rounded out by a veteran leader in Lamar “Accuracy” Abedi, who joined from Minnesota.

However, the season did not get off to the best start. The Surge crashed out of the Stage 1 Major in Texas on the first day. While a strong qualifying had put them into the winners’ bracket, back-to-back losses to OpTic Texas and the Paris Legion sent Seattle packing.

The Surge bounced back at the Stage 2 Major in Minnesota, beating OpTic Texas in their opening match before falling to Atlanta in the second round of the winners’ bracket. Seattle would then be sent home by the eventual champions, the Los Angeles Guerillas.

The Stage 3 Major took the team to Toronto. Seattle finished qualifying with a 4-1 record, setting up a first-round matchup against the New York Subliners. After going 2-0 up in the best-of-five, New York took maps three and four, before taking a 5-3 lead on map five. However, Seattle battled back to take the map and match.

In the second-round matchup, Seattle fell behind early when they dropped the first map to the Florida Mutineers. However, they rallied and took won three consecutive maps to punch their ticket to the Winners’ Final, where they would face the Atlanta FaZe.

It didn’t look good for Seattle, with Atlanta taking a 2-0 lead in the match. But the Surge never gave up and shocked the perennial contenders in a masterful reverse sweep. Seattle moved onto the Grand Final, where they would wait for either Atlanta or the Toronto Ultra to emerge from the lower bracket.

In the end, the Grand Final would be a rematch with Atlanta. Seattle raced out to an early 3-0 lead in the best-of-nine series before dropping two close maps to Atlanta to make the score 3-2 after five maps. Seattle reached championship point with a map six win, but Atlanta was able to keep their hopes alive by taking map seven.

But it would be Seattle who lifted the trophy, defeating their opponents 250-196 on the Hardpoint map eight. Seattle secure their first trophy of the CDL era and validate comments Fenix made to Dexerto prior to the season.

“We can 100% be title contenders next year,…I’m not making promises, and I didn’t make promises to my bosses when I took the job. However, this team is going to be really good and I think we have the talent to be one of the top teams in the league.”

The 12 CDL teams will now return to their home bases to regroup and begin preparations for the Stage 4 Major. Qualifying for Stage 4 is set to begin in early July, with the Major itself scheduled for late July in New York.

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