No coach, no problem: Sentinels’ ShahZaM discusses taking on coaching responsibilities

Sentinels have been one of the most successful VALORANT teams in North America even before Masters started. They ranked at the top of many fans’ power rankings entering the tournament, have looked unstoppable since the addition of Tyson “TenZ” Ngo and are one win away from claiming the title of best team in North America.

VALORANT is a game that is still in its infancy, and because the game is still so young, many teams are struggling to find coaches. Sentinels is one of those teams still actively searching for a coach or analyst to help them in their gameplay.

Due to their lack of help in the coaching department, Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan, the in-game-leader for Sentinels, has stepped up to fill the role. Nerd Street Gamers caught up with him to ask about the team’s success, despite not having a coach or analyst providing extra help.

Read more: TenZ says ‘it would definitely be a consideration’ if given the chance to join Sentinels permanently

Nerd Street: How are you feeling about Masters?

ShahZaM: Pretty good. We finally, after all the struggles at the start of the year with the power outage and no water, we have had some solid days of practice in, and we’re finally finding our groove, fixing the maps that we’re weaker on. Overall we are feeling really confident. Everyone’s been playing a lot of good VALORANT.

Nerd Street: Since you’re the IGL do you feel like you take on that coaching role in the absence of one?

ShahZaM: Definitely. I know our manager is concerned, he wants us to get an analyst at least to help me. There’s a whole lot of work, but it’s not like I don’t enjoy it. That’s why I really like doing it, I really like feeling prepared when I go into a match. Even if they change all their stuff, it’s the confidence it gives you when you have a good grasp on how the other team is going to play.

You just go into the server way more confident, and I can tell that my teammates feed off of that confidence. When they feel like I know exactly what they’re going to do, I can tell that they’re feeling super confident too, and it’s a whole mental game as well. It is a lot of work, and eventually we do want to distribute the responsibilities.

Nerd Street: What kind of advantages would you get with an analyst or coach added?

ShahZaM: Definitely an ease of the workload, for sure. On top of that, there’s no coaching system in the game right now, so even though the coaches are on a two-minute delay, they’re sitting there and watching the stream to understand the game. Being in your voice chat, they can pick up on a tendency. Maybe a team has done their homework and is exploiting a certain way you are playing, and a coach watching the stream can definitely recognize that and relay that information to the team.

I know that’s how the coaches are working right now. They’re watching the stream and calling adjustments based on what they see. That’s one huge thing that we’re missing right now. It’s forced us to rely on the people in the server to be more vocal and to speak up about adapting about changes and the things that they’re seeing.

Before making the jump to VALORANT, ShahZaM played CS:GO for several teams, including Complexity. Photo: StarLadder

Nerd Street: Do you think that you would have finished better in previous tournaments where you lost in the finals [with a coach]?

ShahZaM: Yeah, it’s happened two or three times that we lost a final. I also feel like some of the other teams we’ve played against, I remember TSM way back in the FaZe Invitational, I think their coach was calling adjustments. You could just tell after looking back that they adjusted really well, and that was after a tactical timeout.

Especially with 100T, we’ve always talked about how [Joshua “steel” Nissan] walked out of showers smoke and flanked us. I 100% know that it was right after a tactical timeout, and that was the only opportunity for the coach to speak with them. I’m sure he called that we were completely ignoring the smoke, so that let them adapt and get the timing to walk through the smoke and flank us. I think that it would have helped us, it’s not that we necessarily don’t want a coach. We’ve been looking. It’s obviously not easy to find someone. It’s a new game, it’s hard to find someone that is really passionate for the game.

Nerd Street: What are you looking for in a coach?

I’m not looking for someone with a crazy resume, someone that’s going to take over the structure of our team and create some sort of dictatorship. We’re really looking for someone that’s going to help with the strategic side of things, someone that’s a student of the game and that’s going to help us with more set plays, gimmicky plays, that enjoys watching the other regions and saying, “hey, I watched this Brazilian team do this play, and maybe we can try to implement something like this with our composition.” The coaches that have been like that in my Counter Strike career were definitely the most helpful ones.

Nerd Street: What do you think that you’re doing that has earned you such success over teams who have better coaching resources than Sentinels?

ShahZaM: I think it’s because as individuals we work really hard, not just even just in practice. We all watch all the matches, we play ranked all the time. Even [playing] those hours of ranked you pick up on smaller things. You never know what ranked teammate is going to come up with some crazy play or unique smoke, or angle, or cross-placement. Even the smallest details that you could learn, you get from hours of playing in the game. I’m sure the players on our team have some of the most hours of all the teams in VALORANT. I could bet on that.

I think that’s what it comes down to, is that individually, we don’t put the responsibilities onto someone else about how we should improve, how we should be critical of ourselves. We’re very good at speaking to each other, too. One thing a coach is really useful for is critiquing in practice or after a match. Like, “hey, Shaz, you shouldn’t have done this play, you should have been more patient here” or “hey, [Jared “zombs” Gitlin], you should have actually smoked this, you had a smoke.” We’re good at speaking with each other, so after a lost round or a lost match we manage to have very healthy conversations about “hey, I think you should have done this differently,” or “we need to start doing this or this,” or “this call was pretty bad, this peek was bad.”

Nobody takes too much offense to it or anything, so that’s vital to improving as a team. That’s what it really comes down to, is being able to lose, talk about it, and get it right the next time.

Lead image credit: Dreamhack