I got the opportunity to have a chat with our coach Daniel “kappez” Kauppinen right before Dreamhack, here’s the outcome of that interview enjoy!

Hi Daniel how are things?
They are just fine, there have been a lot of things to do but now it’s slowing down a little bit before the event.

How excited are you for Dreamhack?
We are really excited, we are going to participate in the qualifier for the largest female tournament in the world so we have focused hard to be as good as we can be to this qualifier. The qualifier will take place during the first day of dreamhack if I remember correctly.

For those who don’t know which tournament you’re talking about could you elaborate?
It’s the ESWC tournament, it’s what you would call the world championships for the female scene. The best teams from all over the world will participate, the old 3DMax team have already been invited due to them winning last year. Besides 3DMax there are also other teams who have already qualified for the tournament BMG, Epsilon, Games4u and a brazilian team called INTZ.

With the ESWC qualifier being held during Dreamhack will this mean that you won’t be participating in the BYOC tournament at Dreamhack?
Since ESWC is the largest tournament in competitive female CS:GO it will have priority over the BYOC tournament. If there is an opportunity to play both we will do so, sadly I do think they will be played during the same time so we will focus on the ESWC qualifier.

What have you focused on improving during the time after Copenhagen Games, Dreamhack Tours and Birdie?
We have improved a lot of different things. We have reworked some parts of our game plan due to some things haven’t worked out, we evaluate all the things we do all the time to improve as much as possible. Always looking at the things that doesn’t work and do work and try to make them better. Other than that it’s a lot of general things that we’ve worked on, trying to look at our weaknesses and get rid of them as best we can. We haven’t had the most optimal practise situation of late, a lot of players have been away on holiday and with people’s working schedule it’s hard to get a fixed schedule in place. We have made the best of what we have and I as a coach always want them to train more than they do, but that’s pretty common for every coach no matter the sport.

What do you think will take the girls through to the qualifier?
It would be because of that the girls have taken in what we have talked about especially after Birdie. After Birdie we talked a lot about what we are supposed to do depending on what happens in the game, so that we know what to do and do it automatically so no matter what happens in the game we’ll play our game.After Birdie we talked a lot about different scenarios and a lot about cooperation, they have played with each other for a while now and the teamwork is going forward. If everything goes as planned and works out we have a very good chance of going through.

Since the qualifier isn’t going to take up all the time during your stay at Dreamhack what will you use the remaining time for?
After the qualifier to ESWC we will still have a lot of time to get some good practise together as a unit, it’s hard to get the same conditions at home where people are either working or studying at the same time so it’s good to get a chance to get together and practise as a group on site.

Interview by Karl ”Cowsy” Ljunggren