m1cks on regain: "They really help me instill some belief in myself"

While at Fragadelphia Las Vegas, coach Joshua "m1cks" Micks of regain spoke to Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore after their opening win against Vireo.pro.

The veteran coach/analyst with a plethora of experience across North America opened up about his mental struggles, namely during his most recent tenures with NRG and Elevate, and also spoke about keeping the current regain roster intact.

The full interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets underneath.

We recently saw your return to coaching in February with you joining regain after an extended break, which came after your time with NRG as an analyst. What prompted your return to Counter-Strike?

At the end of the day, I’ve gone through so much quitting from and returning to Counter-Strike that I try not to think about it too much now. With my depression, it’s been really tough to get myself in the proper mindset I need to be in as a coach. I’m like the emotional leader of a team right?

So I need to be able to be all there mentally and be there for everyone, and a lot of times I’m not even really there mentally for myself. So I really struggled with that over the last few years. With NRG, I just wasn’t ready for it; I didn’t do a good job.

I honestly thought I was a little bit done. With regain, I was more interested in coaching an Advanced team; if I was gonna get back into it, I wanted someone that I could grow with. Before I jumped from team to team to team at the start of my career, so I've never really had a solid base to work with someone and grow together. I think [regain] has a lot of potential, genuinely, and I think we’ve shown that in a few matches we’ve already played.

Do you think you’re more emotionally ready now to be the core of this team?

They’ve definitely helped me out a lot, it’s a very mutually beneficial relationship. There’s still times where I’m going through it and I’m not sure about myself, and they really help me instill some belief in myself. I’m still getting there- I’d say not every day is great, not every week is great. But this team has really kept me grounded. I’ve already lasted a decent amount of time on this team compared to others. I think my mindset is a lot better now. It’s still getting there- maybe 40-50% of where I need to be? But I can feel one percent better each day.

Does part of that come from being able to go to high pressure LANs and succeed?

I love the high pressure environments, this is honestly what I live for, what I coach for, and why I do Counter-Strike. Being at these LANs, traveling, with everyone in person, you can feel the pressure and the atmosphere of it. I think I had pretty bad timing in the sense that my career really got going during COVID, so all those events just went away and it was just online. And ever since then I haven’t gotten back to a consistent LAN circuit, so being here definitely adds to my motivation.

Talk to me about the evolution of this team. What can you tell me about Sasha and Fuzenko?

I was very adamant that they should keep the same lineup no matter how we finished in Advanced going into next season. Because to grow as players they need to play consistently with the same people for longer than two months. So they’ve all really committed to that and have already shown a lot of improvement.

Fuzenko is only 16 years old and just finished his second season of Advanced. I think this is his and Halen’s first LAN. They’re a very self-sufficient team, they’re very hard-working, and they’re always putting in extra time outside of the server. Honestly the biggest thing they struggled with was confidence, over-thinking, and understanding how to settle into a game and trust themselves, so that’s been my main focus.