Photo credit: Mark Roe / Red Bull Content Pool
Update (November 8th): A separate Ireland event also took place at the Red Bull Gaming Hub in SETU Waterford. You can read about the winning Irish team for the Red Bull Campus Clutch 2023 qualifier on the Irish Examiner website here.
Original article (November 6th 2023):
Icespice5 has been crowned the UK’s best student Valorant team at the Red Bull Campus Clutch UK National Finals at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere.
They beat Boba Enjoyers in the final yesterday, and qualified for the Red Bull Campus Clutch World Finals in Turkey, which run from November 19th to 24th 2023.
Icespice5 will now go on to battle some of the best student teams in the world for €20,000 in prize money and the chance to be crowned Campus Clutch World Champions.
Red Bull Campus Clutch 2023 kicked off in August, with National Qualifiers taking place across the globe and National Finals determining the best student team from each participating country.
The National Finals concluded at London’s Red Bull Gaming Sphere, with Icespice5 dominating the first Semi-Final, winning by an impressive 13-1 in the second map against City Wok.
Progressing through to the Grand Final, the five-man team clinched the win after a close final against Boba Enjoyers, going into overtime five times and finishing with a final score of 18-16.
Having now achieved the three-peat by winning the UK nationals in 2021 and 2022, icespice5 captain, BENZKI, will be heading to the World Finals yet again in the hopes of being one the UK’s first Red Bull Campus Clutch World Champions.
The Icespice5 team consists of:
- Benjamin ‘BENZKI’ Price
- Jacob ‘joocaab’ Stringer
- Toni ‘wizzing’ Troka
- Jakub ‘Inkelo’ Mrowinski
- Marcio‘soldierval’ Rafael Sousa Camoes Correia
British team captain Benjamin ‘BENZKI’ Price commented: “This year’s Red Bull Campus Clutch has been really good, I’ve won it the past three years in a row and this has been by far the hardest. We practised quite regularly and have been quite strict in our systems, so I think we have a really good chance at the World Finals.
“There’s a couple of teams I’ve got my eye ahead of the Campus Clutch World Champions, like Egypt and Czechoslovakia but other than that I feel pretty confident.”
BENZKI won the UK student Valorant tournament Red Bull Campus Clutch UK Finals with Casa Noturna in 2022.
“This year’s Red Bull Campus Clutch has been really good, I’ve won it the past three years in a row and this has been by far the hardest. We practised quite regularly and have been quite strict in our systems, so I think we have a really good chance at the World Finals.”
BENZKI of Icespice5 on the Red Bull Campus Clutch UK National Finals
The Red Bull Campus Clutch World Finals will take place at the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul, Turkey, which hosted Valorant Champions 2022 won by Loud.
From there, the teams remaining will battle it out in an elimination format, with the Grand Final taking place on November 24th, with the final stages being streamed live on the Red Bull Twitch channel.
Three partners are supporting Red Bull Campus Clutch this season: Intel NUC, AGON by AOC and Jack Link’s.
The news comes as Fnatic won Red Bull Home Ground 2023, with UK star Boaster going bananas.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
