Indonesian esports organisation, BOOM Esports book themselves a ticket to ?stanbul, Turkey where they will be the third Asia-Pacific representative at Valorant Champions 2022 in September. They are also the first all-Indonesian Valorant team to ever make it to an international tournament.

The roster that will be attending the tournament will be captain Saibani “fl1pzjder” Rahmad, Gary “blaZek1ng” Dastin, Rizkie “BerserX” Adla Kusuma, David “Tehbotol” Monangin and coach Dong-jun “meow” Ji along with Fikri “famouz” Zaki on loan from Persija Esports.

Look. Look what it means to them. Look what it means to us.

Thank you for making our dreams come true.

We are proud of you. Indonesia is proud of you. ????@fikrizaki @blaZek1ngg @fl1pzjder @BerserX_ @tehbotolvlr @meowvlrt pic.twitter.com/haRusjvsyk

— BOOM Esports (@boomesportsid) August 7, 2022

To qualify, BOOM Esports had to face fellow Indonesian team, ONIC Esports in the Grand Finals where they had to play a Best-of-5 series to win. Both BOOM and ONIC have gone head-to-head many times before, so much so that local fans have dubbed the matchup ‘El Classico VCT Indonesia’.

The two teams had previously met in the upper bracket semifinals where BOOM came out on top, winning the series 2–0 but the scoreline doesn’t do the series justice as both maps were extremely close with BOOM taking the first map, Breeze, 13–10 and the second map, Fracture, went to overtime but eventually ended 19–17 to BOOM.

ONIC had an amazing run to the Grand Finals, taking down the likes of Made in Thailand, Filipino representatives, Team Secret and fan-favourites to win, Bleed eSports. After upsetting all the aforementioned teams, ONIC would need to take down their fellow countrymen if they wanted a chance to represent both APAC and Indonesia.

BOOM also had an impressive run themselves only dropping three out of the eight maps they had played leading up to the Grand Finals. Just like their previous meeting, this series was close and each map could have gone either way.

Map 1, Bind went in favour of BOOM as they won 13–10. Map 2 saw another overtime with BOOM coming out on top 14–12. BOOM and ONIC faced off on Fracture for the second time this tournament in Map 3, but this time ONIC came out on top 13–11.

Icebox would be the final map to be played and began extremely one-sided towards ONIC as they finished the first half of the map 8–4. Unfortunately, the momentum reset after both teams switched sides with ONIC only managing a mere three rounds before eventually losing the map 11–13.

However, BOOM Esports aren’t the first Indonesians to play internationally as the recent VCT Masters 2 runner-up was Paper Rex who hosted Aaron “mindfreak“ Leonhart and Jason “f0rsakeN“ Susanto, two of the best Indonesian players the country has ever produced.

In the coming weeks, we will see who from the other regions will qualify for Valorant Champions which will take place on 9 September live in ?stanbul. Be sure to stay tuned for that.