Sharpie: "FxRE has definitely put a bit of a boot over our throat structure-wise"

With Alexander "REKMEISTER" Flynn moving to Chicken Coop, Simon "Sharpie" Taylor has been called back into action on Take Flyte.

After their opening win against Reign Above at Fragadelphia 19, Sharpie spoke to Dust2.us' Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about his dramatic travel day, taking time off, the new team structure, and the return of Overpass.

The complete interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets underneath. The questions and answers were slightly edited for clarity and length.

Good start for Take Flyte after the win over Reign Above. How are you feeling?

I’m feeling great. It was a long travel day yesterday and before, but it feels great to be in the server at LAN and competing and playing well. So I cannot be happier, really.

I know Take Flyte registered a sub but you got here like 15-20 minutes before the start. Walk me through the travel day.

Well it all started last night. I got a flight at like 11:30 out of Philly and that got canceled so I had to stay the night. So I was worried I wasn’t going to be here this morning for the start of the matches. I had to stay at the airport even later to try and swindle a flight earlier. So I got one as early as possible, made it here just in time to play. They were like “warm up, warm up,” and I was like “don’t even need to, I’m here to play. I’ve been so upset with the travel, I’ve been in my head and ready to take it out on the server.” So it feels good.

It’s all coming together for you. You just returned to the roster to replace REKMEISTER who moved to Chicken Coop. What was the process of you coming back like?

Yeah the main reason I got benched in the first place was for personal family stuff. So that step away was definitely necessary. I’m definitely in a better spot now than where I was, so being able to come back and show how good of a player I am and establish myself as a strong player on this team is exactly what I wanted to do, and I think I’ve already done that and will continue to do that.

How have things in the lineup changed since you’ve been gone?

A few things have changed for sure. The addition of FxRE [Colton] on our team; he’s definitely put a bit of a boot over our throat structure-wise, like we have a full-on stratbook with us here printed out. That’s all FxRE for sure. Me coming back to the team it almost feels like I never left, because the comms that we have going and the plays that we’re making are still the same ones as we did before. We have really good communication together, we’ve been playing for so long it almost feels like second nature. But other than the structure stuff and the player changes I’d say it’s relatively the same.

Right before Frag 19, Valve replaced Anubis with Overpass. How are you feeling about that change?

It’s funny you say that, our third map in the series against Reign Above was going to be Overpass, but we didn’t let it go to a map three. Anubis was one of our best maps, I’d say top two next to Ancient. Now that Anubis is gone we still have to insta-ban Nuke, but now we’re just scrapping around seeing what team is going to pick what. It’s kind of a squabble up between Inferno and Overpass for us at this point. However I do know multiple players on the team including myself do like Overpass, we just really haven’t gotten our time to practice it yet.

I'm a menace with the MAG-7 in Connector. I've been playing since like CEVO, and I was 13 at the time. I was definitely playing Overpass throughout the years coming into CS2. So I'm excited to see it back, I do like the map. Anubis was one of our best maps but I personally didn't like it too much. I'm excited for Overpass and I think it's a good map, but I haven't played it yet in CS2 competitively.