The Manila-based Team Secret is still in search of a breakthrough in Group Omega after falling to Masters Bangkok champions T1 in a backbreaking three-map series.

Despite the Filipinos’ regained confidence to secure the second map Icebox to force the final map Lotus, ghosts of the past continued to haunt them. Their errors overwhelmed their hopes for a victory in the closing moments of the final map.

“Coming into Lotus we had really good momentum but we sort of just crumbled [under] pressure. I think the team was just panicking a lot of the times [in our round losses],” Adrian “invy” Reyes said during the postgame press conference. 

In Group Alpha, Global Esports bore the brunt of another 2-0 sweep, this time in the hands of DRX, the VCT Pacific Kickoff 2025 champion. 

A 3-13 stomping at Ascent shook Global Esports’ individual and team performances as they dropped their map pick Split, 9-13, afterwards.

“Losing our first map to such a big degree was a little bit too much for us to overcome,” Kyung-won “UdoTan” Go said.  

Team Secret remained at the bottom of Group Omega with a 0-3 record behind Nongshim Redforce and Zeta Division (1-2) and TALON Esports and Rex Regum Qeon (2-1). T1, the top seed, earned the first ticket to the playoffs with a 3-0 standing. 

In Group Alpha, Global Esports is at fourth (1-2) behind DRX and BOOM Esports (3-0) and Gen.G (2-1), and ahead of Paper Rex and Detonation FocusMe (0-3). The two leaders are joining the playoffs.

(To understand how the game is played, see “VCT Pacific: Filipinos look for rebound after Week 2 misfires” in CoverStory.) 

Counterpunch 

After conceding the opening map Haven, 6-13, Team Secret delivered a powerful counterpunch in Icebox as their defensive masterclass limited T1 to a measly three rounds at the end of the first half.

Yu “BuZz” Byung-chul became the spark for the Korean collective as they rallied with a 6-1 run, torching the Pinoy squad’s lead to a single round, 10-9.  

Refusing to back down, Team Secret duelist Jeremy “Jremy” Cabrera went berserk with a triple kill at the 20^th round with James “2GE” Goopio scooping four frags at 21^st to push them toward map point, 12-9. 

The squad put down the ultimatum as they wiped out the T1 crew in B site to even the series with one map apiece.

Team Secret came out guns blazing at the opening of the deciding map Lotus. Brheyanne “Wild0reoo” Reyes dished out a quad kill at the fifth round to take an early 4-1 advantage en route to a 7-5 attacking half.  

But the chinks in their armor started to show right after the side switch as the Koreans exploited their defensive lapses to string six consecutive rounds and bury them in a 6-12 hole. 

Curtains dropped on round 21 as T1’s Young-sub “Sylvan” Ko unleashed his ultimate, Viper’s Pit, to plant the spike at C site and pick off a lone Cabrera to close out the match. 

Adrian Reyes led Team Squad in the stat sheets again, tallying a kill-death-assist (KDA) ratio of 49/46/28 and an average combat score (ACS) of 217 across the three maps. Cabrera popped off in Icebox, delivering 25 of his 43 kills as Iso. 

On the flipside, T1’s in-game leader Yu did the heavy lifting as the series MVP with a KDA 67/39/9, flexing with a different agent for each map.

Team Secret’s head coach Dong-jun “meow” Ji cited improvements in their performance compared to last week’s defeat from ZETA Division. “We are better than last week, that’s for sure. A lot of confidence is up right now, so it’s pretty good,” he said.   

Ji cited the change in their agent picks as the turning point for their victory at Icebox. “It did make a difference when they were playing a comfort agent,” he explained after reverting Jessie Cristy “JessieVash” Cuyco and Reyes in using their signature agents Sova and KAY/O, respectively.

Moving forward, the tactician looks to put more priority in comfort as he builds up the team’s confidence for the remaining matches. 

Uphill climb 

A Team Ace from DRX was the start of an uphill climb for Global Esports as they were blitzed round after round in Ascent, resulting in a 3-9 deficit. 

The Koreans flexed their championship prowess after halftime as they shut down Global Esports’ advances to move up 1-0 in the series. 

Controller Federico “Papi” Evangelista regrouped the team to open Split with a bang, mounting a solid 5-0 defensive start. DRX slowly crawled its way back to the game with a late run, with an elimination win evening things up at 6-6. 

A scrappy pistol and buy round put Global Esports on the driver’s seat for the last time at 8-6, before the defense snuffed out their attacks once more with a triple kill from DRX’s Park “Estrella” Geon slamming the door on any chance of a Global Esports comeback.  

Filipino sentinel Kelly “kellyS” Sedillo anchored the team with a 23/33/10 performance to go along with a 184 ACS. Go topped the fragging list with 25 kills using Cypher. 

DRX’s Min-hyuk “Flashback” Cho was hailed as the series’ MVP with a 41/23/7 KDA, notching 25 eliminations as Neon in Split.  

Global Esports’ head coach Donnie “Elevated” Chell aired his frustrations at the team’s slow start leading to their recent defeats. “Going down 0-1 to a team like DRX is never gonna go well for us,” he said. 

He explained the calibrations following the unprecedented departure of their former head coach, Preston “Juv3nile” Dornon, who was slapped with a yearlong ban due to breaches in the Riot Games Global Code of Conduct. “It’s kind of different being in the head coaching slot where everything is on you,” he said.  

Chell complimented their sixth man Derrick “Deryeon” Yee, who had joined him in the coaching booth: “Having Derrick in the booth was a breath of fresh air because he was very good with the players and he’s obviously a player [as well], and it was helpful to have him and his energy and ideas.”  

With Global Esports stuck at fourth in Group Alpha just above the winless crews of Paper Rex and Detonation FocusMe, Chell emphasized how their next fixture will dictate the team’s pace heading into their last matches. 

“Momentum-wise, I think that game is probably the most important one of the seasons,” he said. “Obviously, we have two teams in our group that are 0-3 so somebody needs to win, somebody needs to make the playoffs.”  

Two playoff spots are still up for grabs in Group Alpha.

Team Secret will open the fourth week of play against Korea’s Nongshim Redforce (1-2) on April 12, while Global Esports will try to return to the win column versus Gen.G on April 13.

The post VCT Pacific: Filipinos lose Week 3 games; playoff chances slim appeared first on CoverStory.

Global Esports will take on Korean powerhouse DRX, while Team Secret will face the monumental task of bringing down Master Bangkok champions T1 on April 7. 

Valorant is a 5v5 tactical shooter video game developed by Riot Games, in which two five-member squads try to outwit and outgun each other using weapons and skills on a round-per-round basis.  

A round win is collected whenever a squad “kills off” everyone in the “enemy” team (called an elimination win) or if a faction reaches their goal: Attackers must be able to plant and detonate the Spike (an explosive device) in one of the sites on the map, while Defenders try to prevent this by holding down plant sites, letting the time run out or defusing the Spike. 

Both teams will get a chance to be Attacker and Defender as they switch sides every 12 rounds. A deuce in the 24th round will send the match into overtime; a team must win two consecutive rounds to claim victory.

Each player of a team pilots an Agent armed with unique abilities that they can buy or charge by eliminating players, as well as guns ranging from pistols to rifles to help out in their main objective of reaching 13 round wins.  

The agent’s ability may fit any of four designated roles: Duelist, who is equipped with offensive-oriented tools to aggressively take space; Initiator, who can gather information or set up other teammates for execution; Controller, who provides coverage using smokes; and Sentinel, who leans toward defensive kits that hold off enemies and flanks.

12 teams competing

Filipino-dominated Global Esports and Team Secret are among the 12 teams competing in VCT Pacific, the game’s highest competitive stage in Asia with a prize pool of $50,000 that started on April 2 and ends on May 2. The teams come from Southeast Asia—South Korea, Japan, “South Asia” and “Oceania.”

Aside from the Pacific, the regional tournaments are EMEA (Spain, France, “DACH,” Turkiye and “MENA”) and Americas (“Latin America” and Brazil), each of which involves 12 teams.

The ten-month season (January to October) is divided into three legs—Kickoff, Split 1 and Split 2. During Split 1, a single-round robin group phase, teams are grouped under Omega and Alpha and battle each other in a best-of-three series format. 

The top four teams will advance to the Playoffs, with a double-elimination bracket, on May 6–18. The top three that will secure their spots to Masters Toronto, the prestigious international tournament, on June 7–22 and go up against the other finishers EMEA and Americas. At stake is a prize pool of $1 million, the Masters trophy and championship points.

The teams with the most championship points at the end of the three splits will book their tickets to the culminating event of the season, Champions 2025 Paris, with a prize pool of $2.25 million. The winning team gets $1 million. 

As of now, Global Esports and Team Secret have lost their second game in the tournament. Global Esports (with a one win-one loss card) is in Group Alpha along with BOOM Esports (2-0), DRX (2-0), Gen. G (1-1), Paper Rex (0-2), and Detonation FocusMe (0-2).  

In Group Omega, Team Secret remains winless (0-2), suffering a 2-0 series sweep from Japan’s ZETA Division (1-1) last March 29. Others in the group are T1 (2-0), Nongshim Redforce (1-1), Rex Regum Qeon (1-1), and TALON (1-1). 

‘A little bit scared’

It had a great start, but Team Secret could not close the opening map Lotus, 11-13, before falling short in its comeback attempt in Icebox, 10-13. Its lineup includes initiators Adrian “invy” Reyes and Brheyanne “Wild0reoo” Reyes, in-game leader (IGL) Jessie Cristy “JessieVash” Cuyco, duelist Jeremy “Jremy” Cabrera, and controller James “2GE” Goopio.

“This is not the result that we expected. I think we were a little bit scared. We were not playing our game, we were just reacting to their [ZETA’s] game,” Brheyanne Reyes said after the match.  

Team Secret saw its 11-6 lead fizzle out on Lotus as ZETA mustered a second wind to a 6-0 run and Shota “SugarZ3ro” Watanabe stuck a spike defuse amid a Team Secrets crossfire for a 1-0 series lead.

The Filipinos tried to mount a comeback in Icebox from a 6-12 deficit as a clutch from Cuyco sparked a 4-0 streak to trim the gap to two. Unfortunately, their hopes were dashed in the 23rd round as a scrappy firefight at A site resulted in their team being wiped out as the spike went down. 

Adrian Reyes led the crew with a 45/30/29 series Kill-Death-Assist (KDA) ratio, dropping 27 of his total frags in Lotus alone, while ZETA Division’s Hikaru “CLZ” Mizutani was hailed as the series’ MVP with a 42/27/9 KDA and an Average Combat Score (ACS) of 244 as Sova. 

Rude awakening

In Group Alpha, Global Esports had a rude awakening from its dream start with a 2-0 defeat from Indonesia’s BOOM Esports last March 31. 

The collective comprising Filipinos Kelly “kellyS” Sedillo, Federico “PapiChulo” Evangelista, and Mark “patrickWHO” Musni, Korean duelist Go “UdoTan” Kyung-won and Russian flex player Savva “Kr1stal” Fedorov was clobbered in its map pick Lotus, 1-13, before losing an 11-13 heartbreaker in Haven.

Global Esports’ dominant form in its win against Detonation FocusMe was nowhere to be found in the opening map with BOOM Esports pulling out all the stops at its defending half to limit team captain Kelly “kellyS” Sedillo and company to a lone round win.

The team finally got a foothold in Haven after taking its first pistol win of the series and the round after to put its opposition within striking distance, 6-8. At 9-12, Sedillo singlehandedly wiped out the BOOM squad to get at C site and ace, energizing his squad toward saving three match points. 

Looking to send the map into overtime, Global Esports found its efforts futile as it was gunned down in the retake attempt at C to close out the series, 11-13. Go anchored the crew with 27 kills using Iso, followed by Sedillo who contributed 19 frags with the sentinel pick Cypher.   

Despite the loss, assistant coach Donnie “Elevated” Chell said in a postgame interview: “…We came back on Haven and I’m proud of the boys for fighting on that map.”  

He added: “Couple more rounds go our way there and I think we take the series in three [games], but it didn’t happen today, and we’ll be back stronger [in our next game].”

On the flipside, Hildegard “Shiro” Arnaldo was hailed the series MVP with 21/15/12 KDA and a 260 ACS leading the way for the Indonesia-based squad as Sova.   

Both Team Secret and Global Esports will try to regain ground in the playoffs. They will close out the third week of play with Global Esports facing the undefeated DRX squad while Team Secret gears up against Masters Bangkok titlists T1 on April 7.

The post VCT Pacific: Filipino squads look for rebound after Week 2 misfires appeared first on CoverStory.