Dreamhack Summer is approaching and therefore we thought to a share a story with you all that brings the attention back to the summer of 2013. A new player were recruited that spring to Team Property and he really did make a splash during a tournament at that event.

Sjow were recruited early the spring of 2013 and were the first major player to join Team Property. He had not really made a mark for some time in the Starcraft 2 scene and were seen as a underdog. The coming weeks before Dreamhack Summer he did not manage to qualify to for the Swedish nationals during the last offline qualifier in Norrköping which was a major disappointment to himself as well as Starcraft 2 division.
A few weeks later we headed to Jönköping and had no real expectations on any major results from our squads since we were not seen as a organization who could bring up a fight against the big teams back then. Still, that did not stop us from having a good mood in the car on our trip down to Jönköping. Here is a short video from the journey featuring Warspawn, NiPIsola (our former Dota manager), Fishy and me myself Teodice.

Well down in Jönköping we rented a minor house 30 minutes drive from Dreamhack that had a lot of space for the players to sleep on. Here is one of my favorite pictures from our stay in that house. In the picture you can see Warspawn, SjoW, HoBbe, Buffy and kreati from the Dota team.

I did not stay to the end of the Monopoly session but the day after I heard that SjoW were a really tough businessman who late in the end night won the match.

Dreamhack Summer started and went on. In the end SjoW were the only one left representing Team Property in Starcraft. We were all excited about him playing well but many of the games early on in the group stage were tough, so we did not really have high expectations. In the end he managed to get through the third group stage after beating the Swedish players SortOf and ViPro and ending up second place in the group. In the playoffs the Protoss player Harstem were waiting for him who at that time played for Fnatic.
He managed to beat Harstem 2-1 after Harstem attempted to go for his standard macro play in the third and deciding game. SjoW showed some real good drop play which surprised a few of us since he is known to be quite slow. Though the challenge had only just started since in the coming round the Korean Zerg player Life awaited him. Life were at that time considered the best player in the world so the expectations were at rock bottom for SjoW. Even so, SjoW expressed that he were confident to beat Life and he was the so called ”final boss” of the tournament. The quarter final with SjoW vs Life kicked off and we held our breath.

To everyone’s surprise SjoW managed to take the first game off Life but all in our minds we thought that Life were just getting warmed up and played calmly. The second game were a real crushing victory for Life in which he dominated the game from the first minnutes to its end. So came the last game. We all hoped for it but when SjoW started to fall apart after some really good harassment he did the common mistake of going ”full foreigner”. That’s pretty much when a player (most often non Koreans) are looking to win a match and then starts to over extend. They start to take bad fights and soon Life were in SjoWs main base and hammering away at buildings.
Then something amazing happened. SjoW, the slow playing Terran, also called ”skalman” by us, started to climb back. Picking good fights and avoiding major casualties with his units. We could not believe our eyes when his marines, step by step, started to move across the map, ever closer and closer to Lifes bases. The this happened:

The feeling when SjoW won against Life is something that still fills us all up with pride and joy. In the end he managed to reach a 3/4th place finish after losing to StarDust but it was all amazing for us at that time.
When I or others in the team lack the motivation or feels a bit down. Then we just think back at this moment and it gets us all hyped up again. We want our players to reach their peak with us and help them on their journey. We have done it in the past and we will do it again.

Sorry for the wall of text but when its story time it easily gets a bit out of hand.

Thanks for reading!

//Petter