Academy teams are a serious thing in CS:GO. We all know just how successful Natus Vincere are thanks to all of their academy team prodigies. In fact, they’ve had so many of them that they were able to afford to sell Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov to G2 Esports.
Sprout are nowhere near their success level, but they decided nonetheless to start their own academy project. This seems to be a great idea given how many talented young people are out there, playing CS:GO. The game’s player base has more than doubled in the last year and everyone is looking for the next Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev.
About Sprout
Sprout is a German esports organization that was created at the end of 2017. In total, their CS:GO team participated in a lot of significant tournaments, but only managed to win B-tier ones. They also finished second in four A-tier events.
Every now and then, we see Sprout taking part in S-tier competitions like IEM Katowice, IEM Rio Major 2022, and IEM Cologne. More recently, Sprout failed to qualify for BLAST.tv Paris Major but their current CS:GO roster is strong enough to pose serious challenges to most of the world’s best teams.
At the moment, Sprout are barely a top 50 team in CS:GO. But their potential is much higher than that. Hopefully, with the creation of the academy team, the organization will be able to find one or two highly talented players and significantly upgrade the main roster in the coming years.
We are bidding farewell to an incredible player and person. Thank you @refrezhCS, for all the hard work, passion, and dedication you've brought to our team.
You've been an inspiration on and off the field and we wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors. 🤝🌱 pic.twitter.com/XDIwtGMbhy
— Sprout (@sproutGG) April 11, 2023
The academy project
For an organization like Sprout, which likes to be part of the tier-1 group but isn’t willing to invest millions of dollars into building a world-beating roster, finding 18-year-olds with great skills and great determination seems to be the most likely solution to get to the next level.
Here’s what the organization announced on Twitter in regard to their decision to start an academy team:
“Dear Sproutlings,
With the apparent absence of success, following our RMR run last week, we spent a lot of time reflecting on our situation together as a team. After intense and careful deliberation, we have recognized that we need to make extensive changes in order to be well-positioned in the competitive scene, especially now as we await a new era with CS2, without losing sight of our philosophy.”
You can read the complete post on Twitter.
Dear Sproutlings,
With the apparent absence of success, following our RMR run last week, we spent a lot of time reflecting on our situation together as a team.
After intense and careful deliberation, we have recognized that we need to make extensive changes in order to be… pic.twitter.com/3cfTFphxyx
— Sprout (@sproutGG) April 17, 2023
Header: Sprout
