Article by: Chris "confire" Luong, Brett "Few" Sheffield and Andrew "Conflict" Nguyen

This is the eighth part of X3O's Winter Classic 2008's "Who is Who", if you missed the earlier editions, you can check them out below:

Part 1 (X3O)
Part 2 (Gravitas, LOOK, deadendtheory)
Part 3 (FD, Drift, Southern Aggression)
Part 4 (makeSHIFT, PAY, Initial)
Part 5 (Dynasty, Backdraft, AGENT)
Part 6 (Sure Shot, ATP, TFM)
Part 7 (Varsity, Gordon Bombay, Hypnosis)

With a lot of newer, up and coming teams attending, we at X3O-Gaming.com thought that they deserved some spotlight. Normally when someone starts to watch a tournament from the comfort of their home online, they focus on the main three or four teams that they know. X3O-Gaming.com wants to make it easier for you at our Gaming Center's debut event of 2009. We are going to start giving you, the fans an overall summary on the teams that will be attending. We will be adding to this list as time goes on, so stay tuned to learn about all the teams that will be attending the first ever X3O Winter Classic.

Click HERE to view the event page of X3O's Winter Classic 2008. The team list is HERE!

PMS.Divas (as of 1/11/09):

• Christine "potter" Chi
• Stephanie "missharvey" Harvey
• Catherine "cAth" Leroux
• Dimitra "d1m" Deliopoulos
• Elaine "lainey" Kim

Yep, if you don't know by now, PMS is Pandora's Mighty Soldiers - this is for those of you who attend events and hear PMS.Athena Twin asking what PMS stands for! I've personally been to 3 events in the later half of 2008 and have heard her ask that question at all 3 sponsors' booths.

Now onto this PMS team participating at the Winter Classic. This is an all-girls team with quite a bit of talent. Their main leader, Chi (potter), has won two ESWC Counter-Strike Ladies Championships with SK.Ladies. Harvey (missharvey) was also part of one of those championship teams. Both of these ladies (formerly of SK.Ladies) have joined together with Leroux (cAth) - formerly a member of EG.Girls, Deliopoulos (d1m) - a brand new face to the community, and Kim (lainey) - the calm and collective one that keeps everyone on track.

SEP (as of 1/23/09):

• Joshua "josh_rt" Lee
• Arten "Balla" Esa
• Bernie "BGS" Grish
• Duc "myst" Nguyen
• Mitch "mcan" Cannon

One of the many pugs that will be attending the Winter Classic, but don't underestimate them just because they aren't a "team"! Three of the five players have played together before as a team which would make it reasonable to call this group of 5 players: a "pug". The team itself finished CAL-Open with an 8-1 record, making it one of the top teams going into playoffs. However, only a few members have played on LAN consistently while the others haven't or don't do so often. So it will be interesting to see how they will adapt to the environment of LAN. All in all, they are will be in attendance just for fun and maybe, hopefully pull out an upset on some top tier team.

cpd (as of 1/11/09):

• Andrew "bLue" Hassan
• Brent "Reject" Litherland
• Seon "duze" Prince
• Scott "hurikaNe" Hill
• Thomas "TMO" McEvily

This team is filled with experience, but has not yet been able to test themselves on LAN; they are planning to partake in the upcoming CEVO-Main season. In fact, the Winter Classic will be their first ever LAN tournament! However, they are considered to be a local VA (Virginia) team who used to be sponsored by c3 Cyberclub, a LAN center in Ashburn, Virginia. Unfortunately, the former team disbanded, losing their sponsorship. Now they are back with several new faces to the team all with at least CAL-Main experience. With players like Hassan (bLue) and Litherland (Reject) formerly with team Zetsumei, this team looks like they have potential to compete with the mid to upper tier teams. They recently finished the first season of ESEA League with a 5-3 record, nearly beating JMC. It will be interesting to see how they will do at the Winter Classic.

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As always, stay tuned here at X3O-Gaming.com for the latest Team X3O news, coverage and more!