G2 Hel, the sister League of Legends team to G2 Esports in the LEC, have earned promotion to Liga Nexo, making them the first all-female team to compete in the league.
In fact, as confirmed by journalist Rigas, G2 Hel are the first all-female team to earn promotion into Tier 2 of a European Regional League (ERL). The roster of toplaner “Zeniv”, jungler Marta Mesas “Shiina” Garrido, midlaner Rym “Rym” Salloum, botlaner Maya “Caltys” Henckel, and support Ève “Colomblbl” Monvoisin are now all history-makers.
G2 Hel qualified for the Hextech Series final last month and while they weren’t able to win, the 75 points earned was the exact amount they finished above Sportia Khore to finish third in the rankings of Circuit Tormenta, Spain’s third tier.
This was enough to earn them a spot in Liga Nexo’s promotion series where they first had to face their aforementioned neighbours in the rankings, Sportia, once again.
They easily dispatched Sportia 2-0, but then the real challenge came in the qualification match. To earn promotion, they had to defeat Tier 2 organisation Dream Makers who had finished 8th in Liga Nexo. G2 Hel came back from behind twice after losing the first and third games to eventually win 3-2 in a thrilling series to secure promotion.
Jungler Shiina had a particularly great tournament, recording the highest average KDA, 10.27, of the promotion tournament and did so while playing a different champion in every match, having used Jarvan IV, Vi, Xin Zhao, Poppy, Sejuani, Nocturne, and Pantheon.
Meanwhile, support Colomblbl recorded the highest average assists of the tournament with 15.57 per game after averaging only three deaths per match.
The players quickly shared their excitement on social media as Rym celebrated: “Holy. frog. We did it!! We ascend to LVP2 Spain. THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of ur support and everyone who kept giving me their strength, words can’t describe the level of happiness I’m feeling right now. My team is too f**king goated.”
Zeniv also expressed her gratitude to her teammates: “No matter how bad games 1 and 3 were, I’m just happy that games 4 and 5 we were really locked in. My team are fkin smurfers.”
G2 Hel will now compete in the Liga Nexo Split 3, dates of which have not yet been confirmed. They are also one of the invited teams competing in the Equal Esports Cup, an official European LoL event for women and enbies hosted by Deutsche Telekom which kicks off on July 1st.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
