Life-changing
PARENTS’ DECISION
14th of July 2007 – It’s a beautiful day and Koen is sitting inside with his parents staring at several pieces of paper. His parents slowly go through the pages and read everything carefully. They must’ve been thinking what the hell is happening, their son becoming a contracted professional gamer? They agree on signing the contract with only one rule in mind: ‘’Koen, school goes first and your results should remain the same. If the results go down you’re not allowed to play until your results are back to normal again.’’ And so it began, the start of Koen’s professional esports career with ‘Begrip Gaming’.
Stadium Team Championship
EMERGENCE OF KOENZZ
It unexpectedly became one of the most successful years in his career. With his team he won every online tournament and dominated the Trackmania scene. They had a lot of fun playing and talking with one another. It wasn’t just a team anymore, everyone became very close friends. However, the team had one remaining goal that year: win the most prestigious online team tournament in Trackmania. With more than 250 teams participating, including the world’s best teams, it surely wasn’t an easy task.
After weeks of competition, they managed to qualify for the Grand Final which was played at 8:30 pm CET on the 27th of October 2008. A few minutes prior to playing the final the team had the idea to put ‘Zz’ in all ingame names. Therefore, Koen’s ingame name changed from simply being ‘Koen’ to ‘KoenZz’. The Grand Final was a very close match against the Norwegian team ‘BadBoys’, but Koen and his teammates managed to win two of the three tracks and therefore won the final with 2-1 in a best-of-3 scenario. This was the cherry on the cake.
Origin of the Z
In memory of
Some of his teammates quit their esports careers after winning the finals as they have achieved everything they wanted to achieve. The remaining members of the team, including Koen, transferred to a new organization and continued playing Trackmania for many more years. In memory of the players in this team and the successful year they had, which happened to be Koen’s first year as a professional gamer, he kept one of the two ‘Zz’ in his name. The ‘z’ will always make him remember where he comes from.