Julia Kiran
The Swedish eSports player is a true veteran of Counter-Strike. The 27-year-old athlete started playing back in 2010 and has played for 7 clubs since then. Three times in a row in the period from 2015-17, teams from juliano won the most prestigious tournament – Intel Challenge Katowice. By the way, recently, together with NAVI.Youth player Ilya m0NESY Osipov, she took third place at the 2vs2 charity tournament. And as part of the XSET team, she participated in the men’s DreamHack Open December 2020 tournament, taking 7-8th place, losing to Virtus.pro and Espada. After a long career in CS: O, on September 16, Julia decided to change her gaming discipline and announced her move to VALORANT.
Geguri Seiyoung Kim
The Korean eSports player plays Overwatch. She gained popularity after the release of the game from Blizzard, where she quickly soared to the top of the world rankings. She was noticed and invited to join the UW Artisan team. With this team, she won qualification for the prestigious Nexus Cup tournament, after which she was accused of cheating. The girl had to prove her innocence for a long time, and a broadcast was organized to find out whether Geguri was using third-party programs or not. In the end, everything ended positively for the girl. In February, Kim became the first girl to enter the Overwatch League. She joined the male roster of Shanghai Dragons.
Sasha Scarlett Hostyn
In 2016, Sasha entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the female esports player who won the most prize money among women ($384,269). The 27-year-old Canadian has played Starcraft, Starcraft 2, and Magic the Gathering throughout her career. In February 2018, she won the Intel Extreme Masters in Pyeongchang, timed to coincide with the Winter Olympics. She became the first woman to win the premiere Starcraft 2 tournament.
We can understand that girls are a minority in professional esports, but their number is growing every year. Well-known clubs open women’s teams in gaming disciplines, and some girls are as good as men. It is also worth noting that almost every esports tournament features girls as hosts or commentators. Girls also hold positions of managers or media specialists in clubs. Game developers and tournament operators pay attention to the gender component, so they announce their tournaments for women. It is expected that this trend will only gain momentum in the future.