Behind the efforts of the L.A. squad was David “Dpei” Pei, the only head coach that, amid continuous staff and roster changes every year throughout OWL, has maintained his position since the inaugural season back in 2018.<\/p>\n Ultimately, success was apparently inevitable at the City of Angels, especially given the stacked pool of talent. Among those players in the current 2021 roster were: OWL Season 1 champion, Kim “Birdring” Ji-hyeok; Overwatch World Cup winners, Indy “Space” Halpern and Grant “moth” Espe; DPS extraordinaire, Kevin “kevster” Persson; two potential Rookie of the Year candidates, Young-hun “MuZe” Kim and Min-seok “skewed” Kim; and flex DPS, Gia Huy “MirroR” Trịnh, who’s proven his versatility by assuming either rank or support roles, when required.<\/p>\n In a conversation with GINX, Dpei revealed that having finally found success felt like a relief, and he hoped to use it as a foundation for the immediate challenge of the playoffs that lay ahead of him. “[It] feels really validating for me personally, but also for our team [and] it gives us a lot of confidence rolling into the playoffs,” Dpei said.<\/p>\n “It’s a good pressure to have [finding success], it definitely feels good to have won it, but pretty much right after you’re thinking about playoffs. So the winds are ephemeral, to say the least,” the L.A. Gladiators’ head coach added.<\/p>\n As a franchise, the Gladiators are known for their innovative strategies or for marching to the beat of their own drum, an approach that defined them early on in the Overwatch League. This mantra would give us legendary moments like The Great Bamboozle against London Spitfire or being the first team to ever record damage done with Symmetra, courtesy of Lane “Surefour” Roberts. <\/p>\nA weight off their shoulders, but hungry for more<\/h3>\n
Becoming a seasoned Gladiator <\/h3>\n