In 2023, Evil Geniuses won VALORANT Champions, claiming just the third ever world championship in Riot’s tactical FPS. Less than two years later, only one face remains: coach Christine “potter” Chi.
Potter, a former Counter-Strike pro who first joined EG as a player in 2021, signed an extension this offseason to continue coaching through 2027. The team also signed Jacob “icy” Lange and once-upon-a-time best player in the world Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker.
This year, the goal for potter is the same as it always is: do more with less.
Insider Gaming had the opportunity to sit down with potter at the VCT Americas Media Day. The following interview has been edited slightly for clarity and length.
IG: At the SEN City Classic you talked about wanting to work with that roster specifically, but what led to the team ending up with icy as opposed to Tyler “sym” Porter?
“My mindset towards rosters has always been tunneled towards making it work, no matter what. I’ve never looked at it from the angle of ‘when can I replace this player?’ So when I said that at the time, I fully believed that would be our roster in 2025.
After that tournament though, it was clear there were some issues with sym. I do really wish we could have made it work; sym is incredibly talented, he’s really hungry, an incredible teammate and a really good human. But the time issue was always on my mind, with trying to bring yay into a comfortable environment and highlighting him to be successful. We need to make sure everyone was playing their roles properly, especially with all of yay’s role changes and not being as comfortable on the sentinel role.
This roster that we’re going into Kickoff with, this combination of players turned out to be better for us.”
IG: The last time you kept the same roster core between years was from 2022 to 2023, and we all know how well 2023 turned out. How important is it to keep the same core together through the offseason?
“It’s so important. Even at that time, I was getting so much shit from the community, my peers, from some in management about replacing certain players on that 2023 roster. But I knew keeping a core was going to be important. All the work, all the small annoyances that teams have to do that take so much time, that was already out of the way [in 2023].
And it’s the same with this roster in 2025. We took last year to hash out a lot of those details, to learn about each other, get those fundamentals down. All those things are done. And yeah we lost Alexander “jawgemo” Mor, and that fucking hurt really badly, and it hurt us as a team. But, we put in a lot of work last year, and we feel very confident about that work we put in.”
IG: What do you hope to see out of both yay and Icy? What can they bring to the table that VCT Americas viewers haven’t seen yet?
“Over the last three years, EG has been a place where every player ends up not by choice, but more so by how things turned out. Each player has their own hunger, and drive, and story they want to rewrite for themselves. And that’s always been my strength: having these misfit players with their own desperate drive they need to prove. I see exactly [those kind of players] in yay and icy.
With yay, he’s gonna have to prove that he’s not just a Chamber main. That’s his ultimate goal. He’s swapped over to the sentinel role, and every day it’s a work in progress. We have El Diablo on our team, but we still need him to do his job, which sometimes isn’t as sexy as going out there and getting three crispy headshots. Sometimes he’s gonna have to play off of his trip, and it’s small things like this we’re working out as a team. He’s such a capable player, but sometimes being that capable can bait you into into certain engagements that don’t make sense.
For icy, he’s an incredible role player. His IQ is up there, he’s humble, and he’s a very sacrificial duelist. As a duelist, you have to be greedy, but you also have to be willing to go in there and die for your team. So my focus for him is to highlight his mechanical skill. That consistency wasn’t there last year, and I’m hoping he finds that here on this roster.”
IG: You had the prestige and name power to go coach another team. What made you want to stay with EG?
“I did get a lot of offers, and they were all exactly the same: building up a roster of misfits or players that need to prove themselves from tier two or tier three. I did want to look at a team that was willing to spend the big bucks on big names, but that didn’t work out. A lot of the rumors are true. I did look into NRG, and those talks did go pretty far, but they went a different route. At that point it was either go somewhere brand new and do what I’m already doing here, or continue what I’ve done at EG with the core I’ve already built here.
I fully believe in Phat “supamen” Le, in the same way I was fully convinced jawgemo was going to be the best duelist at the end of the year. Turns out he wasn’t even our main duelist!”
IG: He wasn’t even the best duelist on EG!
“[Laughs] Right! And NaturE is a top IGL. He and I have worked so long together, and we’re in that sweet spot. And Derrek is casually good, and I like that. In practice and matches, he’s not straining for highlights. His energy is fantastic.
I really stayed because I believe in this core. I think we made the right roster moves. Yay is a big question mark, but he absolutely is elevating us and catapulting us up like how Ethan and Demon1 did in 2023. So I’m excited about this roster.”
Where do you think Evil Geniuses ranks in the VCT Americas 2025 hierarchy? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum.
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