100 Thieves have signed four members of Highground -- a squad of former PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds players -- to round out their VALORANT lineup, led by Spencer "Hiko" Martin, the organization announced on Thursday.
The signings include Keane "Valliate" Alonso, Zachary "Venerated" Roach, Diondre "YeBoiDre" Bond and Alfred "Pride" Choi, who each competed in PUBG prior to making the transition to VALORANT. Over the past couple of months, those players have been competing as Highground, a roster assembled by former Team Liquid PUBG coach Tanner "7Teen" Curtis.
Announcing the full roster for our first 100 Thieves competitive VALORANT team:@Hiko@Valliate@VeneratedZR@YaBoiDre@Pridexd
Let's get those Ws. #100T pic.twitter.com/kIX4r8jh8X
- 100 Thieves (@100Thieves) June 25, 2020
100 Thieves' first competition as a full roster will begin Friday in the T1 x Nerd Street Gamers Showdown, the first North American tournament of the VALORANT Ignition Series. The Ignition Series is a circuit of Riot Games-designated events featuring higher prize pools and promotion from the game developer. The event boasts a $50,000 prize pool and includes other teams such as T1, FaZe Clan, Cloud9, Team SoloMid, Sentinels, Immortals and others.
The original roster of Highground was put together via tryouts to represent the PUBG community in the ESPN Esports VALORANT Invitational, a tournament that pitted players from various esports titles against one another, in April. Valliate, Venerated and YeBoiDre competed in that event as a part of Team Battlegrounds. Team Battlegrounds finished seventh-eighth in that event.
They will join Hiko, who was the first signing for 100 Thieves in VALORANT. A former top North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro, Hiko has competed on pickup teams with the likes of Braxton "Brax" Pierce, Keven "AZK" Larivière, Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham and others in tournaments since VALORANT went into beta in April. Prior to moving to VALORANT, Hiko competed for various teams in Counter-Strike, such as Rogue and Team Liquid, where he took second at ESL One Cologne in 2016.