Shroud comes out of retirement to join Sentinels Valorant team
Sentinels announced on July 8 that Michael “shroud” Grzesiek has joined their Valorant roster. The former professional Counter-Strike player turned popular streamer will compete with the team for the North American Last Chance Qualifier for Valorant Champions, set to take place in August.
The organization needed to field a replacement for Hunter “SicK” Mims who could not compete in the eventthe team’s IGL Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan said on July 1. He said on stream that he will be picking up SicK’s role as a Controller for the team.
Shroud last competed professionally in 2019 on the free agent squad Old Guys Club, before hanging up his keyboard and mouse for streaming. He is most remembered for his time with Cloud9 where he was a staple of the roster for many years.
His most notable achievement with the team was a second-place finish at ESL One: Cologne 2017 and a first-place finish at the Americas Minor Championship in Kraków in 2017. He has not competed professionally in Valorant outside of show matches and early beta tournaments.
The legend returns, and he’s here to win@shroudjoins the Sentinels Valorant rosterpic.twitter.com/VaIYTeR2nq
— Sentinels (@Sentinels)August 02, 2025
Sentinels have been teasing the move for the past week as multiple players have tweeted “expect the unexpected.”
The North American team has gone through major turmoil in 2022 as their results have plummeted in comparison to 2021 and 2020. The team went through a major roster change in Valorant Champions Tour Stage 2, replacing Jared “zombs” Gitlin with Akrew star Eric “Kanpeki” Xu.
Sentinels also signed a coach in Shane “Rawkus” Flaherty and had him sub in at one point in VCT Challengers asSicK dealt with personal issues and Tyson “TenZ” Ngo was out sick.
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The team was in danger of not even making it to the North American LCQ at one point asGhost Gaming could have secured a spot over themwith a single win in the VCT Challengers playoffs.
If Sentinels manage to make it through the LCQ tournament, it will be their first international Valorant event of the year at Champions.
Now, fans will have to wait and see how shroud fits into the Sentinels Valorant teams as they areset to begin their bootcamp soon.
