Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker made his return to professional play with Disguised in the North American Challengers league in a disappointing loss to Oxygen Esports. Sean Gares explained why he thinks yay underperformed in his first match back.
The former Cloud9 and OpTic Gaming star Valorant player yay made his return to professional play on April 20 as Disguised took on Oxygen Esports in the NA Challengers league Split 2. His new squad was swept 2-0 with one map looking lopsided in the favor of Oxygen and the other going to overtime in an Oxygen comeback.
In his first map back since playing with Cloud9 at VCT LOCK//IN, yay only recorded seven kills and put up 16 deaths. Former 100 Thieves Valorant head coach turned content creator Sean Gares co-streamed the match and shared why he thought yay looked rusty in his first match back.
“I just think like the timing, to be honest, between these two [Joshua ‘steel’ Nissan and Amgalan ‘Genghsta’ Nemekhbayar] and yay was really missing in a lot of those hits,” Gares said.
Sean Gares gives his take on yay’s return with Disguised
Gares pointed to a few rounds in which yay, as Jett, was put in “unwinnable” situations due to a lack of coordination with his teammates’ utility. Both steel and Genghsta were on Initiators on the first map, Haven, and did not look drilled in the timings that yay wanted to take or hit bursts onto the spike sites.
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“I mean obviously yay did have some mistakes, let’s be real,” Gares said.
The former Valorant coach also speculated that yay could have been dealing with a lot of pressure in his return to pro play to get a win for Disguised when his team is not yet cohesive enough to pull out a win against a quality opponent like Oxygen.
Disguised and yay will have another chance to notch a win in NA Challengers when they play against Shopify Rebellion on April 27.
