After a chaotic year with Global Esports Global Esports Asia-Pacific Rank #23 PatMen Patrick Mendoza UdoTan Go Kyung-won (고경원) Kr1stal Savva Fedorov xavi8k Xavier Juan Autumn Kale Dunne spent on the other side of the world from his family, wife, dogs, and house in the United States, Donnie "Elevated" Chell is now a free agent. The assistant coach-turned-head coach spoke with VLR to recap his first season in VCT, discuss his roster-building philosophies, and explain why he believes South Korea is far ahead in esports development.

Elevated became GE's head coach in April during Pacific Stage 1 after Juv3nile 's removal and suspension due to potential breaches of its Esports Global Code of Conduct, and called the transition chaotic.

“I definitely was not coming in expecting to have to lead the team from a strategic standpoint,” he said, sharing that, with no background as a professional player, he had to learn a lot on the go. “I just have a background in coaching and playing sports and stuff like that, so I understand team dynamics and strategy a lot... It was definitely an adjustment to having to learn how to do timeouts and learn how to be assertive and confident in my ideas.”

Elevated has spent nearly a decade in esports, starting with Dota 2 content creation and commentary before moving to Valorant early on. He joined Acend Acend Inactive ALIVE Gilad Hakim musashi Alessio Xhaferi pyrolll Artur Minin cullumx Nikolaj Cullum Andersen chiwa Egor Stepanyuk in 2022 as a content creator before eventually becoming an assistant coach under Nbs , a role he may have never gotten had it been offered a few days later.

“I set a timeline that if I'm not coaching by the end of a period, I'm gonna go do something else with my life,” he said. “And I got the opportunity to coach with Acend with like, three days left on my timeline... I was at a point where I've been doing content for so long that I was just really tired of being a content creator. I was probably just gonna go get a regular job.”

After finishing the 2024 season with Acend, he entered free agency and eventually joined Global. In a chaotic year, some of his favorite moments leading the team came from seeing his theoretical ideas succeed on stage.

“I think that was probably some of my favorite stuff this year, when I would fully cook something and we'd bring it out on stage and it would work,” he said, citing the team's Iso-Chamber comp on Icebox. “I know some teams have played it on Icebox before, but I knew this comp was going to destroy, and I knew we were going to [expletive for beat] on Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #2 Lakia Kim Jong-min (김종민) ZynX Kim Dong-ha (김동하) Ash Ha Hyun-cheol (하현철) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) .”

After studying synergies between Agents for two-site maps with key mid control, he built a comp with Iso, Raze, Sage, Astra, and Fade. Global became one of the first teams worldwide to play on Corrode, and Elevated opened up on his preparation for the map. For a month, Global was undefeated in scrims when playing with that comp, which led to the team bringing it directly onto the VCT stage. Global began play on the map with wins over Rex Regum Qeon Rex Regum Qeon Asia-Pacific Rank #8 Monyet Cahya Nugraha xffero David Monangin Jemkin Maksim Batorov Kushy Bryan Carlos Setiawan crazyguy Ngô Công Anh and Team Secret Team Secret Asia-Pacific Rank #105 kellyS Kelly Sedillo JessieVash Jessie Cuyco TenTen Kim Tae-young (김태영) Sylvan Go Young-sup (고영섭) BerserX Rizkie Adla Kusuma before losing to Gen.G.

Elevated and Global pose on stage after defeating RRQ 2-0. Elevated and Global pose on stage after defeating RRQ 2-0.

“We were very confident it was going to work, and it did. And then Gen.G anti'd us and we lost faith in my idea,” he said with a chuckle. “It's just fun to have an idea that you know nobody else has and then show it, and then for it to work. It's just cool.”

Having worked with kellyS and then Kr1stal as his in-game leaders, Elevated said that while a strong IGL-coach relationship is key to building a strong VCT team, the building blocks of a strong team start from much higher up in an organization.

“In my opinion, I think the best sports teams are usually built with excellent management hiring an excellent coach who then has an idea of how he wants to build the team, and then builds the team accordingly,” he said, and says that Esports teams should be the same. “I think in an ideal world, management decides what the vision of the team is and picks the players that fit the vision.”

Elevated grew up playing sports and being surrounded by a system of mentoring, even playing baseball through college. He says that while sports and esports aren't exactly the same, there are areas where certain aspects can be borrowed.

“I will tell you right now that the level of professionalism in esports is abysmal compared to what it is in traditional sports, and it's at all levels,” he said. “I've been working in esports for eight years now, and there are all the horror stories about mismanagement and people in roles just because they were friends of the owner. Then you look at the real world, and the GM of a team has an MBA or an economics degree, and they've actually learned the skills necessary to function in the job. I think that stuff is pretty important and definitely missing in Esports.”

Elevated also shared that his experience with Global Esports in 2025 has shaped his approach to roster building and helped him recognize some of the priorities when assembling an international roster like Global's.

“If you're going to have English, let's say, as your main language, I think that the strongest voices in the team need to be incredibly fluent in that language,” he said. Language gaps meant plans clashed: “A lot of times they look at the game very differently and we'd have conflicting ideas of what to do and we'd be trying to do two things at once, which would make our attack side very spotty and hard to progress sometimes.”

On the topic of roster construction in Esports, Elevated also examined Korean teams and highlighted a key difference that, he says, separates the country from others. For one, he says that set structure in Esports sets the nation apart. He brought up the example that on a Korean team like DRX DRX Korea Rank #5 Hermes Ahn Byeong-wook (안병욱) MaKo Kim Myeong-gwan (김명관) free1ng No Ha-jun (노하준) HYUNMIN Song Hyun-min (송현민) BeYN Kang Ha-bin (강하빈) , head coach termi is calling the shots, and that the team isn't as simple as “ MaKo running the team and bringing his friends.”

termi and Elevated exchange a fist bump ahead of DRX and GE's Stage 1 match. Elevated's debut match as a head coach was against termi's DRX squad in Stage 1.

He said: “termi is building the team the way that he wants to build the team, and that's why it doesn't really matter whether they're bringing in, you know, this academy player or this guy, or that guy, the team functions well because the structure is there to carry them through the learning process.”

He also praised Korea's academy pipeline, saying that aspects of competition, like being a good teammate, knowing how to communicate, and resolving conflicts, are taught early on, whereas they might not be taught at all in the U.S. by the time a player makes his professional debut.

“I think you kind of get that through the academy system in the Korean league,” he said. “But then you go to Americas, and the top player is just like some 18-year-old kid who has never left his bedroom and has never talked to another person, and now they're supposed to somehow be a team leader. How's that going to work, right? It's just a total gamble whether that's actually going to work out well.”

On what's next for him, Elevated said that he's not quite sure. He said it is quite late in the recruiting cycle for coaches, but that he's waiting.

“I'm not going to wait around for too long because it's a tough industry to break into, so if my one shot is over, then so be it,” he said. “For now, I'm just trying to continue to put myself out there, do stuff that I was doing before that worked, build my portfolio. I have a lot more knowledge, a lot more experience than I did before, and I feel like I can showcase that in a way that should be attractive to some teams. I know for a fact that there's teams that need help in certain areas, and so, yeah, just trying to make myself as invaluable as possible.”