Day one of YaLLa Compass Spring 2025 has concluded, after 14 high-octane matches of Counter-Strike. Despite plenty of team withdrawals, the online event has still gotten off to a roaring start, overcoming the obstacles to bring us some top-quality CS.
After day one of YaLLa Compass Spring 2025, there are some pretty clear winners and losers – let’s look at some of the narratives.
BetBoom and NAVI Junior start clean
Credit: Stephanie Lindgren | BLAST
Three matches, three wins. That’s the start that NAVI Junior and BetBoom got off to in Groups A and B, respectively. It’s immensely impressive from NAVI Junior in particular, with the team only joining up for YaLLa Compass Spring 2025 as a late replacement for Passion UA. With online CS2 tournaments like this, it’s easy to underestimate the toll that playing consistently takes on players, so it’s all the more impressive when we see clean sweeps like this over the course of a full day.
This sets both of these teams up perfectly for a path to the Playoffs in tomorrow’s matches, but will have particularly important implications for BetBoom thanks to those all-important VRS points on the line. BetBoom are here on the back of qualifying for the BLAST Austin Major, and they’ll already be looking at improving their placement ahead of the next Major cycle. A 3:0 start on day one is exactly what they needed to kick off YaLLa Compass Spring 2025.
Spirit Academy and Nemiga disappoint
It was a start to forget for both Nemiga and Spirit Academy, who fell right to the bottom of Groups A and B. Nemiga are another team who have just qualified for the upcoming BLAST Austin Major, but were unable to carry their good form into YaLLa Compass Spring 2025 as they lost three consecutive matches to GUN5, ECLOT, and NAVI Junior. That’s the joy of online Counter-Strike.
Spirit Academy were a team I was high on coming into the event, with more and more hype growing around the talent of kyousuke. While the young prodigy put on a strong performance in both of Spirit Academy’s matches, he wasn’t able to get his team over the line in what was eventually quite close games. A little adversity can only be a good thing for these young players testing themselves against others on full lineups.