A little adversity wasn’t going to stop Team Impulse from qualifying for WorldGaming’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Canadian Championship.

Instead, it propelled them to earn a spot among the eight finalists competing at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto on Mar. 26.

After forfeiting their first match due to a connection and communication issue with their online opponents and event admins, the team of Michael “sSacrifice_" Greco, Gabriel "Sw1tchFPS" Lamontagne, Lucas "TheGreatSmack" Ethier and Michael “aG_NeSTyy" Lossignol powered their way through the losers bracket with six straight 2-0 series sweeps to qualify for the national tournament.

“If anything, it kind of just made us play better,”  Greco told TSN.ca.  "I like the guys that are around me because they’re just guys who are willing to compete. It sparked a fire … and we just kind of took that as more fuel in the fire and we had a positive mindset throughout the whole tournament. We knew that we were good enough to make it and I think it just made us try harder.”

The adversity began for Impulse, and Greco specifically, well before the final qualification stage.

Since WorldGaming’s format requires all players on a roster to be Canadian, Greco was forced to temporarily leave his professional club, Cryptic Void Gaming, and find a group of compatriots interested in competing for a national title. It turns out three French Canadians rooted in Quebec were also looking for an established player to join them in the same cause.

While they didn’t speak the same native language, the in-game chemistry and communication didn’t take long to develop.

“The way we mesh together and the way we play the game, it’s like we play it as a certain style that we all understand,” he said. “I think we kind of got lucky in terms of the overall understanding of how we want to approach things are the same and it’s just building that little chemistry and communication to really make us an overall better team going into the weekend.

“Communication is all callouts. Every building on the map or place has a callout, so as long as they say the primary position, the name of the callout, in english, I’m able to adapt and really understand what they’re saying.”

After ironing out the language barrier, Impulse cruised through the open qualifiers and into the online playoffs. Save for the opening round forfeit, Impulse cruised some more through the online playoffs until the final series, where they shone brightest. Leading eXcaliburHQ 1-0, Impulse clawed back from a 5-2 deficit on Search and Destroy to earn a sixth consecutive series sweep and a place in the Canadian championship.

“We showed some willingness and we never really quit in any of our game types,” Greco said. “That’s the mindset you want to have as a competitor. You never want to give up. Even if the scoreboard says something else, you always want to set the tone for the next game no matter what.”

At stake in Toronto this Sunday is a $20,000 grand prize ($65,000 prize pool), a trip to the 2017 Call of Duty World League Anaheim Open in June and, of course, the Canadian championship.

In an theatre full of Canadian competitors, the national pride might be the most coveted prize of all.

“As a competitor, money aside, you always want to win everything you enter. I think it would mean a lot [as a Canadian]. I know for these guys, my teammates don’t go to a lot of Major League Gaming events, so they’re very excited for this event,” Greco said. “Obviously the money is nice, this is the biggest prize pool we’ve had in Canada. … It would mean the world to me to win this event.”

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The teams competing for a piece of the $65,000 prize pool at WorldGaming’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Canadian Championship are:

GIRG
SetToDestroyX
Fury Gaming
1Hype
Team Impulse
Earthroot Gaming
Rezist Esports
Solar HQ