Team Secret opens VCT Pacific Stage 1 with back-to-back losses

MANILA, Philippines – All-Filipino Valorant squad Team Secret suffered back-to-back losses in the opening week of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Pacific Stage 1 at the COEX Artium in Seoul, South Korea.

The Adobo Gang's first opponents from Group Omega were DRX, the top team from last season that they defeated at the end of the 2023 regular season. In Sunset, DRX claimed a substantial lead at the beginning that even with Team Secret taking consecutive rounds in the second half, it would be the Koreans who took the map, 8-13. Lotus saw a closer first half match-up between the teams, but DRX shut down Team Secret in the second half to take the series.

Facing off against fellow Southeast Asian team, RRQ another slow start had Team Secret once again catching up in the first map. The Adobo Gang managed to win six consecutive rounds, but RRQ just had enough leverage with their first half lead to close out the map at 10-13.

A different Team Secret was seen in the second map. A tied half saw the Adobo Gang punish RRQ with a seven-consecutive-round win to force a decider in Icebox.

The third map saw a close fight between teams, trading leads and even leading to overtime but it would be RRQ who would take the series, 12-14.

Speaking to the media after their losses, Team Secret coach Evan "Warbirds" Olzem aired out his frustrations about how the team was not playing to their standard.

"It's the first [week] we didn't play to our standard. We've been here before, having a tough first series and we built momentum coming back and that's what we hope to do," said Olzem.

Particularly with the match-up against RRQ, Olzem sees that the team had the advantage in all three maps and just had little mistakes that the other team capitalized on.

Captain Jessie "JessieVash" Cuyco admits that the loss against RRQ was mainly because of the team's performance.

"Maganda naman yung laro namin kaysa nung against DRX pero kami talaga yung may problem kaya kami natalo. There was a moment na sigurado na akong masesecure na namin yung series. Ang dami lang naming nasayang na rounds nung last map," said Cuyco.

Heading into their match-up against Japan's ZETA Division, Olzem has two things he is going to focus on in the week ahead: fundamentals and cleaning up the team's game.

He adds, "For the next match, we will be focusing on not overheating too much and trusting each other for the trades. It's just cleaning up the little mistakes. A lot of the rounds that we lost came down to those little mistakes. Like in Icebox, we should have won that. That was the thing that sucked the most. We had two rounds that we missed our lineups which was really frustrating. We just have to smoothen out our game."

Team Secret will face ZETA Division at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 14 (Manila time).