There’s been much debate as to the strength of the UK scene recently, as every time something falls in place, some other thing seems to go wrong. We’ve seen this time and time again but finally something positive shines through the disbanding teams and inner-team turmoil. Into the Breach are in the early stages of creating an academy team.
Into the Breach have confirmed to UKCSGO that their aim is to create a fully UK rostered Academy Team. On top of volt joining Fnatic Academy, this marks an unprecedented time of investment in young players from the UK scene. Although the UK scene has had academy teams in the past, they’ve always had little success and have often approached the idea the wrong way. The most recent example of which was Endpoint Academy, a team that had its fair share of problems and never really met the potential that an academy run by Endpoint should have. To get an idea of what ITB aims to achieve with this project UKCSGO spoke with owner Sam “SlayTheMinotaur” Macedonio:
We’re looking at building a UK stack academy to continue our principle of trying to support the UK scene. We’re in the initial stages of this, and are looking at options – we hope to announce something soon.
As the oracle’s of the UK scene may know, Into the Breach creating an academy division was always bound to happen due to their dedication to the scene and as the decision to invest in an academy team comes after adding a Head of Initiatives to the team on May 1st. We were able to speak to Blaine “Blainey” Uknighted, said Head of Initiatives, to get an understanding of what this move means going forward:
I am pleased to report that ITB has allocated funding to look into building a UK Academy team. UKCS is an ever-expanding community & is going from strength to strength with new & upcoming talent. We look forward to continuing our support for grassroot esports communities.
There has been no decision on the roster itself but UKCSGO will continue to keep you informed. In addition to this we were able to sit down with SlayTheMinotaur for an interview which will be released soon.
