Xeppaa chose esports over school, and now he’s starting for Cloud9 Blue

College or esports? So many esports players' careers have hinged on that question at one point or another. Most players start competing when they are 15 or 16 years old in smaller amateur tournaments. If they are approaching the skill level where they can go pro, that will usually happen around the time they graduate high school. Thus the crucial question that usually has parents on one side and the player on another.

While this dilemma is a fairly common one in the families of prospective esports pros, rarely does it go as far as it did for Erick “Xeppaa” Bach. Earlier this year he was signed to play VALORANT by Cloud9 Blue and is now part of the starting roster competing in Stage 3 of the VALORANT Champions Tour.

“After I graduated high school in the summer of 2018, I moved from Miami to Orlando,” Xeppaa said. “The first semester I was supposed to be in college, I lied to my dad that I didn’t have time to sign up for classes.”

With the break from school, Xeppaa found himself grinding CS.

“I made it to MDL [Mountain Dew League], a semi-pro league during that time and I had just made it to a FACEIT Pro League where I could play with the pros,” he continued.

But even though he was gaining momentum in the amateur circuit of NA CS:GO, his dad wasn’t convinced.

Read more: From Fragadelphia to C9 Blue, Floppy and Xeppaa’s path to pro esports

Xeppaa, center, won Fragadelphia 14 alongside C9 Blue teammate Floppy and Version1's Vanity. Photo credit: Nerd Street

“I told my dad before the next semester I didn’t want to go to school,” Xeppaa said. “He got real mad. I didn’t know what to do. I told my dad I was going to go full time with school, but I only took one class. So Monday through Friday, for four or five hours a day, I would leave my house and go sleep in my car when I was supposed to be in class. Then I came home and would grind CS again at night.”

For an entire semester, Xeppaa was pretending to be in college but sleeping in his car so he’d have the energy to grind CS at night on his gaming laptop. There’s no doubt that schedule had to impact his playing ability, but it didn’t matter. In early 2020, Chaos Esports Club gave him his first shot on a notable org and he was locked in.

“Chaos flew me out and it made my dad’s eyes open up, it helped him figure out what this opportunity actually was,” Xeppaa said.

That moment where a player’s parents “get it” is always interesting. For some it’s attending the first LAN and seeing the passion of the fans, and for others it's the first paycheck. For Xeppaa’s dad, it was a team being so impressed they wanted him to fly out to their compound for a tryout. Still, even if he gets it now, Xeppaa isn’t exactly volunteering his college scheme, at least not yet.

“He doesn’t even know about the situation, hopefully he doesn’t find out,” Xeppaa laughed. “I probably won’t tell my parents for another 10 years.”

Read more: EZ5, Noble qualify for Nerd Street’s VALORANT Summer Championship

Chaos Esports Club is a notable org, but if Xeppaa’s dad had any more reservations, Cloud9 is the kind of place that can make those go away. As one of the most prestigious orgs in esports, getting signed to C9 represents truly “making it” for many players -- Xeppaa included.

“I always wanted to join a Tier 1 org,” Xeppaa said. “I knew I wasn’t going to stay on Chaos forever, so joining C9 was a big thing for me. I’m also happy that I get to reunite with Leaf.”

After being added as a substitute for C9’s run through Challengers Finals that had the team come up just short of qualifying for Masters Iceland, Xeppaa has now officially been added to the starting roster.

One of NA CS’s most talented fraggers, Xeppaa’s VALORANT transition was made, like many former NA CS pros, out of necessity.

“VALORANT just has a lot more orgs invested, that’s the difference in the scenes right now,” Xeppaa said. “Even Tier 2, Tier 3 orgs are in VALORANT. You don’t see that in CS. It’s hard to play CS if you know you need to be making money. VALORANT just provides all that.”

C9 Blue has quickly been climbing the ranks of top VALORANT teams on top of masterful performances from Son “xeta” Seon-ho, Nathan “leaf” Orf and Mitch “mitch” Semago in the last Challengers series. With Ricky “floppy” Kemery and Xeppaa only recently making the switch from CS to VALORANT, by the time Masters: Berlin comes around, C9 Blue might be one of the best teams in NA.

Lead image credit: Cloud9