Behind every great team is an equally great supporting staff.
In the world of esports, it’s easy to forget that besides the players there’s the hard work of team managers and supporting staff lifting up the team. We spoke with Matt Bejar, team manager and head of operations for Aurora Gaming, during our visit to their bootcamp. From him we got a bit of insight about what managing a championship caliber team entails.
“For us, dapat 100% ng time nila is nasa competition,” says Matt. “Ang main goal namin as management is to help them, kahit sa mga simple things, na maga-arise habang nandito sila.”
As the team manager, Matt works together with the coaches to set the team’s daily schedule. From official scrims to bonding activities, all those are coursed through the team manager to make sure everything is organized. Matt even keeps tabs on when players have to deal with personal matters so that the team can work around them.
“Sobrang critical talaga yung management pagdating sa mga players. All of us are aware naman na may stories about mga players behind the scenes. So as much as possible we want transparency.”
Matt has been working as a team manager since season five of the MPL PH. He started out with Blacklist International, working with them through their highs and lows. Matt points to Blacklist’s season seven championship run as an example of the front and back end of a team coming together to make something truly great happen. That’s something that Aurora’s hoping to replicate with their current team.
Activating the Team
To that end, he points to Elrasec “Boss Rada” Ocampo, Aurora Gaming Country Lead, for being a big factor to the success of any team he’s been a part of.
“Seeing how he handles yung team, yung players, and yung backend, talagang ina-activate niya,” said Matt. “Siguro dun nanggagaling yung system namin na kinakausap [yung mga players] ng isa’t-isa. Tapos chine-check namin yung mga reasons, yung mga small things, para maka-deliver sa performance yung team.”
Still, having to perform at the highest level day-in and day-out is stressful even to the most hardened pro players. There will be friction and frustrations but Matt and the team always return to being transparent with each other. “Pinapa-intinde din namin na hindi naman sa lahat ng araw perfect ang galaw ng bawa’t isa. Meron magiging small lapses or pagkukulang and they understand that.”
And of course there’s the bottom line that they’re still a team of professionals. They have the single goal of competing and succeeding and it’s important that they keep that focus. “You can’t really predict na hindi magkaka-problema yung mga players,” continued Matt. “Magkakaroon din mga shortcomings yung team so it’s about transparency and understanding. And at the end of the day, hindi siya pwedeng reason bakit hindi kayo nagper-perform.”
Banner photo from MOONTON Games.