Meet the teams that have qualified for Nerd Street’s Apex Legends Summer Championship

July 27, 2021

by Mitch Reames

With the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) in its offseason until September, Nerd Street’s Summer Championships are one of the bigger events on the Apex calendar until it returns. With a group of strong teams already qualified via monthly tournaments and a bigger field to follow, there will be a lot of competition for the prize pool of $10,000. Here are the first five teams who have qualified for Apex Legends’ Summer Champs.

Pittsburgh Knights

Roster: Deston “Bronzey” Nguyen, Josh “mercyonlyy” Hanko and Hunter “Asura” Perez

The trio currently signed by the Pittsburgh Knights locked up their spots at Summer Champs by winning Nerd Street’s March Monthly qualifier. When the team won that tournament, they were competing under the name South State. At the ALGS North America championship, the squad competed for Charlotte Phoenix and finished 13th out of the 40 teams competing.

Sign up for the Last Chance Qualifier for Nerd Street’s Apex Legends Summer Championship!

Immediately following the ALGS championship, the trio was picked up by the Pittsburgh Knights. Over the last few months, the team has jumped orgs a few times but has found success at the top level of Apex Legends esports. Summer Champs will put them against a group of teams that finished in the top half of the ALGS Champs as well. This will be a great chance for them to move closer to ascending to the top tier of the game.

XSET

Roster: Charles “Clane” Lane, Kenan “Keni” Colakovic and Beau “RamBeau” Sheidy

This is another team that now represents a bigger organization than they did when they qualified. The winners of the April Monthly under the team name SZN, XSET picked up the squad ahead of the ALGS Championships. At the time, only Clane and Keni were signed to XSET with Brandon “FunFPS” Groombridge as the third.

During that tournament, XSET finished 24th, just narrowly missing the cut where the 40-team tournament got cut down to 20. Summer Champs will be one of XSET’s first chances to compete against top-level competition with the addition of RamBeau to the team.

CHR

Roster: Kyle “Crook” Hughes, Cameron “Hambino” and RONN1E

While most of these teams are now on larger orgs than when they qualified, this roster went the other direction. Obey Alliance dropped the team, despite a 12th place finish at the ALGS, and the roster is currently looking for a new org.

Summer Champs will become a great place to showcase the team’s abilities for any org looking to pick up a new roster ahead of the next ALGS season. The trio is currently competing under the team name CHR and has placed well at other offseason events in July. That, combined with a strong performance at the ALGS Championships, indicates a roster at the top of potential options for an org looking to get into the scene.

Team Liquid

Roster: Thomas “Flanker” Cook, Brandon “oh Nocturnal” Singer and Christopher “Muffins” Lee

Every esports fan knows Team Liquid. When they compete, they usually do well, and Apex is no exception. Throughout the 2021 ALGS season, Liquid had some events that clearly showed this team was among the best in the world. But the actual ALGS Championships were a bit disappointing by Liquid’s standards with the team finishing in 17th.

At the time, Liquid featured Mac “Albralelie” Beckwith, the second-highest earning Apex Legends pro ever as part of the TSM dynasty that dominated the first year of Apex esports. He was just a stand-in for Liquid and has since gone on to join Cloud9, who will be trying to qualify for Summer Champs via the Last Chance Qualifier.

The new third is Muffins who has competed on a variety of teams, most notably Fnatic in 2019. This three-man roster was together for Liquid’s qualifying run in the June Monthly tournament when they took first in a field that included Albralelie and C9 among other top teams.

Spacestation Gaming

Roster: Joseph “Frexs” Sanchez, Angello “Xenial” Cadenas and Mark “Dropped” Thees

Our most recent qualifier to Summer Champs and the final monthly winner, SSG joins with the highest finish of any team already qualified in the ALGS Championships. A fifth-place finish awarded the team a prize of about $35,000 in that event. Since then, they have dropped Jay “Claraphi” Stanley in favor of Dropped.

Dropped is most known for his time on Rogue but was playing with an unsigned squad by the time of the ALGS Championships. SSG was also the only team of these five who reached match point at the ALGS Champs. For people unfamiliar with Apex Legends scoring, that basically means they were one win away from getting first place.

Basically, once a team reaches 50 points based on a combination of kills and placement, they become match-point eligible. Once that point is reached, that team needs to take first place and the competition ends with everyone else being ranked by their total points. Eight teams were match-point eligible when Kungarna closed the game out, but SSG actually finished third in that same game. They really were just a few crucial moments from being the North American champions. It goes without saying this is a great roster and is likely the favorite at Summer Champs, but it’s truly anyone’s competition with so much talent spread around the field.

Everyone else who could qualify

These are just the five teams locked in, but the field will eventually widen out to 20. The top five finishers at the Last Chance Qualifier the day before Summer Champs will add another batch of top teams. Then the ones who have been grinding these monthly tournaments since March will also be rewarded with the final ten spots going to the highest point earners through all their finishes across Summer Champs events. Check out our Apex Legends leaderboard to see where all the teams stack up in terms of points.

Lead image credit: EA