ANS enters Valorant competitive scene, signs with T1

Former Overwatch League DPS star, Seonchang “ANS” Lee, has entered Valorant by signing with T1 as the its sixth man today, March 19. The former San Francisco Shock player won two titles in OWL and retired from competition in January of 2021 for the second time.

ANS will be joining a T1 roster that has gone through many changes in the past few months. As the team failed to qualify for any of the Challengers events in the Valorant Champions Tour, they went through multiple roster changes during the first stage of competition. T1 parted ways with Braxton “brax” Pierce and Keven “AZK” Larivière, and signed Timothy “autimatic” Ta and Rahul “curry” Nemani. The organization also hired its new coach, David “dd8” Denis, who seems to be the mastermind behind these roster decisions.

ANS in Overwatch

ANS started his Overwatch journey in 2018 on the South Korean Overwatch Contenders team, BlossoM. He had some standout plays on the team, but he was more impressive in the ranked ladder. ANS retired in 2019 but he continued to impress on the ladder and was picked up by the Shock in 2020. He would come into the league as a rookie and help secure the squad another title in the league.

After the season concluded, ANS retired again, citing mental and physical burnout in a TwitLonger to fans.

In his 2020 season, ANS excelled on hitscan DPS heroes like Widowmaker, McCree and Ashe. He was also awarded a Role Star award for outstanding play as a DPS in the Damage category.

ANS’ role in T1

ANS is not the only former OWL player on the T1 roster. Ha “Spyder” Jung-woo is the team’s main Duelist and played for the Florida Mayhem in 2020 under the name Sayaplayer. The team brought the DPS star over from South Korea and fit him into the team quickly. The same could happen for ANS.

In the announcement video, dd8 said that ANS will be joining the team as a sixth man and will also be working with the previously dormant T1 Academy team. The former DPS star will work under the main roster while he acclimates to the new title and environment.

“We are excited in sixth man in ANS and we’ve got an Academy team to help support our overall success for Valorant for now as well as into the future,” dd8 said in the video.