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crush — the path to NAVI

CS2 / News / 10 August 2021 — 12:00

In this article, we will get you acquainted with Igor.

Recently ua Igor “crush” Shevchenko joined the ranks of ua NAVI as an assistant coach of the Born to Win Academy. In this article, we will get you acquainted with Igor.

Before he got into the esports scene, ua crush played hockey and did some swimming, he even considered going professional but that didn’t work out. 

In 2007, a classmate suggested playing a community-made map in Counter-Strike 1.6. Igor downloaded it and tried it but realized that he much more prefers the classic game. He also tried Warcraft 3 but his love for CS 1.6 was greater.

Eventually, ua crush started playing at some LAN tournament in Kyiv. He often played mixes, it is tournaments where players are gathered at random right before the event. This is how he met ua def and ua F1L1N, later they created team ua ACG (Art of Cybergame) and started playing in online tournaments. This roster also included ua smike and ua Pancher.

After some time, his team was signed by ua eXplosive organization, their journey ended after 5 months of representing the club. Igor and ua F1L1N joined the team ua Worst Players, where they were accompanied by the current ua NAVI player ua Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. 

Igor “crush” Shevchenko
NAVI Academy assistant coach

«Things went on its own course because when I played for the most teams I had my studies and any events I had to part take I had to find balance. As time went on, things got more serious, and I realized I had to devote more time into CS

I can’t say that I had an easier attitude to the competitive game before but signing up with ua pro100 can be considered a starting point. There were new faces, bootcamps: I started getting more support from my parents because it was becoming more of a job».

ua Crush has been playing for ua pro100 for almost a year. He was one step away from qualifying for the PGL Major Kraków 2017 and also finished fourth at the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 tournament. 

After his run with ua pro100, he continued his career with ru Vega Squadron. Under the “sharks” banner, he played in two Major tournaments, took second place at the StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 6 and Bucharest Gaming Week Invitational

In August 2019, he joined ua HellRaisers. The main achievement for that team during that period was second place at the DreamHack Delhi Invitational 2019. Later that year, ua crush played for us Evil Geniuses at the EPICENTER 2019. He replaced us Brehze, who had visa issues. At the tournament, us Evil Geniuses took 3rd-4th places by beating ua Natus Vincere in the quarterfinals. 

For the past year and a half ua crush has been a player of ru Team Unique, the roster had frequent shuffles, which had a significant impact on the results. Having seen a vacancy for an assistant coach at NAVI Academy, Igor decided to try himself in a new field. We are sure that his years of experience in the pro scene will help us maximize the potential of our young players.