Women's Leagues Stage 2: New champions crowned in all four regions

Over the past few months, a number of women's-only tournaments have been running in all four regions, with the champions being crowned over the past month. Let's take a quick journey through these scenes to see how the new and returning champions achieved their titles.

Jump to:

• CCS Women's League: North Americaz
• CCS Women's League: Europe
• Circuito Feminino: Brazil
• XP Women's League: Australia
• Ladies League: South Korea
• Project Eris and Project Athena: Upcoming

CCS Women's League: North America

Starting in NA, Season 2 of the CCSW tournament saw a number of well-known names get involved. including the NAL organisations of Mirage and Disrupt Gaming -- though the latter roster left the organisation mid-season -- as well as Team SiNister, SH Esports, and GuGuDolls, which includes both the CL player of Marmalade and the DreamHack champion of Goddess. 

The tournament itself had a best-of-three map, double-elimination format and kicked off at the beginning of June. Its very first play day saw Mirage taken out in a thrilling 7-4, 7-8, 3-7 scoreline against SH. 

While Mirage then went on to win its initial losers' bracket matchup, both it and SH was knocked out in round two. This had come off the back of Disrupt beating SH 2-0 in the semifinals, due in part to a very strong 35-14 kill-death performance from Jehuey.

On the other side of the upper-bracket, meanwhile, GuGuDolls came back from an initial map loss in its first game -- which was retroactively changed to a 7-0, 7-0 win due to an opponent having a recoil macro on their computer -- to reach the winners-final with four consecutive map wins.

This set up a GuGuDolls vs ex-Disrupt final. While Jehuey once again stepped up and led the Orgless team, the Marmalade-Goddess duo was too much to handle, with both hitting a 1.8 K/D.

The game ended in three fairly one-sided maps, 7-2, 4-7, 7-2 to GuGuDolls giving it a grand-final spot.

Orgless then forfeited its next game, resulting in Sukuna -- who had knocked out Mirage and previously lost 2-0 against GuGuDolls in the semi-finals -- getting a chance for revenge.

After starting 1-0 up due to its upper-bracket run, GuGuDolls then won two 7-4s to end the season in an almost flawless fashion, giving it the CCS Women's League Season 2 title.

CCS Women's League: Europe

At the same time, CCS also ran a similarly formatted and scheduled tournament in Europe, which starred the reigning CCSW champions now under Delta Project.

While many of DP's main competitors from last season had disbanded, there were also two returning teams, Endpoint and bTitans, who had arrived with fresh lineups after finishing last season in third and fifth.

The tournament itself started just two days after its NA equivalent and saw Delta Project smash through its first two opponents in straight 2-0 scorelines. This included a 2.2 K/D from the ex-Benelux League player of MissMarie against bTitans, followed by a standout 27-15 kill-death spread from the Rogue streamer of Kitty to reach the winners-final.

On the opposite side of the bracket, Endpoint and Spice Grills both won their own quarter-finals easily to then go the full distance against each other, with Spice Grills taking it, 2-7, 8-7, 7-4. 

Following this, Delta Project's dream run to win the outfit's first-ever title was put on hold as it lost in a 4-7, 2-7 against Spice Grills, sending the team to the lower-bracket final against Endpoint. 

This knockout game ended in a remarkable 8-6, 8-7, 8-6 scoreline to Endpoint, as a number of 1vXs from the Portuguese player of Electra made all the difference.

While Spice Grills came into the grand final with a map advantage, two 8-6 map wins for Endpoint eventually flipped this. As such, the game was pushed all the way to a fifth map for the second time in CCS history (following the EU Season 3 Finals).

Here, due to a strong offensive half on Villa, Endpoint eventually managed to hold out on its defenses to a 7-5 win, as a triple kill from Barbara on Alibi was enough to seal the deal on round 12 to claim the title.

Circuito Feminino: Brazil

The Black Dragons players have been the Queens of the Women's Circuit in Brazil for the last two years. having lost just a single tournament in this time due to a BO5 defeat against FURY at the 2020 Finals.

Now, after winning Stages 1-3 of the 2021 Circuit, they were the clear favorites during August's Stage 4 Finals. Nevertheless, after a number of very close results during the BO1 group stage, the team then suffered its first best-of-three map defeat since the organisation had first entered the scene in July 2019. 

This loss came at the hands of the Red Wolf Esports Female team which had only managed a fifth, sixth, and joint third-place finish during the first three stages, but had clearly been elevated by the introduction of Lay and juu in place of the well-known mand and dooxy.

Juu went on to become the Stage MVP with the highest KPR of any player in the tournament (1.01), while the Red Wolf player of Naath was crowned the grand-final MVP.

Even with this win, Black Dragons is locked in to enter the October Finals as the top seed, but will likely face stiff competition like it did in 2020.

The fifth and final stage of the Circuit will kick off on September 9th and will include the reintroduction of the new Cinderellas Esports roster, bringing the league back up to six teams.

XP Women's League: Australia

The fifth season of the XP Women's League also came to a close this month, with a new victor crowned after the three-time consecutively winning Elevate team disbanded. 

After going 14-0-0 during the group stage, the Qwacked roster swept the Finals, with the grand-final being the closest it came to losing a map in the whole season due to an 8-7 on Clubhouse against Overt.

Amateur Series: Ladies League: South Korea

Finally, at the beginning of Stage 2, the South Korean scene saw its own Ladies League come to an end. R6 Velvet was crowned the back-to-back champion in the only Asian women's league after having also won in 2020. 

This ₩3,000,000 (~$2,700) tournament saw eight teams progress through an initial group stage followed by a four-team playoff stage. Across this week-long event, the eventual winners (led by the ex-Faust player and prominent caster of Jieun "HAFUM" Lee) lost just one map (7-8), while eventually taking the grand-final 2-0.

The Autumn season of this tournament will return this weekend for another five-team week-long tournament, which you can watch on the rainbow6kr channel.

Ladies League 2021 Summer Winner! I love everyone who supported me
All the ladies' teams who participated this time worked hard. I love all of our team members who practiced almost all week for 2 months.

Project Eris and Project Athena: Ongoing

With these tournaments now done, the attention moves over to two ongoing tournaments spearheaded by the EUL caster Jess; Project Eris in North America and Project Athena in Europe.

Starting with Eris, this kicked off on August 26th and currently boasts a massive $4,000 cash prizepool as well as a $1,000 merchandising pack and $5,000 Razer gear pack on offer. This makes this tournament one of the very biggest in North America outside of the NAL and NACL tournaments, even coming in at twice the prize valuation of the recent CCS Season 5 tournament.

Teams competing include the CCS champions of the GuGuDolls, the Disrupt, Mirage, SiNister, and SH Women's rosters, with GuGuDolls having taken an early victory against SH last Thursday.

Further details for this event can be found here, though the prize pool and schedule has been changed since its original announcement.

Looking over to Europe, a €10,000 tournament has also been announced by OPL, who is currently involved in the GSA League (among other tournaments).

As well as being the biggest prize pool to date across all women's tournaments outside of Brazil, it will also include two separate leagues, with a relegation system to mimic the national leagues seen across Europe.

The league will start on September 9th and include many of the rosters seen during the CCS season, with the notable exception of CCS champion Endpoint.

---

Be sure to tune in for the Project Eris and Athena tournaments in the coming months and check back here at SiegeGG for further updates in the coming weeks.