Rising Hope is Losing Hope
By Sebastian Rooney
Rising Hope, an all female Valorant team, announced on October 5th that the entire team and one of the coaches had left. It would be revealed by Jehiel, former Rising Hope coach, of what led to the decision for the team and her to leave the organization in a Twitlonger.
The Situation
In this post she stated that another coach, Simons, would threaten to reveal himself to the team. These threats were not a one-off event with Jehiel saying that he would regularly make these threats despite the team requesting not to. Allegedly Simons eventually did end up revealing himself to the team and coach on a Discord call while the team was training.
At that point Jehiel and the rest of the team unanimously agreed to leave the team. Rising Hope announced on twitter on October 5th that the team had left, saying goodbye and thanking them for their time. It was also mentioned that Simons and mdvjk were still with the team and were going to form a new team. There was no initial mention of any allegations.
Rising Hope Clears the Air
A few days later on October 13th, Rising Hope put out a follow up statement about the allegations on Simons. They confirmed that Simons is no longer with the organization and all those involved with the incident would be fined and would apologize to the players and community.
In this announcement Rising Hope said, “”We very much regret that such an action was taken by one of our members, we want to make it clear that we did not receive enough information, as some members of the organization withheld it from the general management.”
Where Do We End Up?
This whole situation is incredibly frustrating. For years, women’s esports have been trying to get off the ground with varying degrees of success. It feels like as women’s esports continues to grow, these stories become more common. Every time there is progress in making esports more inclusive it is one step forward and five steps back. It’s not fair to these players who have equal passion and put in just as much effort as other players. As time goes on, we can only hope that behaviors like this can be spotted and addressed before they happen.