Philadelphia Fusion Sign SUNGMIN As Assistant Coach

Overwatch League franchise Philadelphia Fusion announced the addition of Cho “SUNGMIN” Sung-min, who joins the team as an assistant coach. The news surfaced on Thursday, April 7, just under a month before the 2022 OWL season kick-off.

SUNGMIN has officially joined Philadelphia Fusion, where he will serve as an assistant coach and work alongside Jung-yeon “Chara” Kim and head coach Hyo-jin “J1N” Cho. The 23-year-old joins the Fusion from O2 Blast, having never coached an OWL team before.

SUNGMIN started his professional Overwatch career in December 2017, when he joined GameHome Monsters as a player. After a short stint with the Korean squad, SUNGMIN continued competing with EXL-RAISO, Machi Esports, and GGTC, but he could never find any considerable success as a player.

After trying to succeed as an Overwatch player for nearly two years, SUNGMIN transitioned to coaching and got his first coaching job at BM Hawk in January 2020.

Despite having no experience as an Overwatch coach, SUNGMIN has quickly found success in the role. Within three months of joining BM Hawk, he helped the team qualify for Contenders 2020 KR Season 1 – Week 1.

Unfortunately, BM Hawk could only manage a ninth-12th place finish at the tournament and even failed to qualify for the second Contenders. Still, success was just around the corner for the Korean Overwatch team, as SUNGMIN and co. won tier first title in April at Open Division 2020 Season 2 – Korea.

But that remained BM Hawk’s only notable success with SUNGMIN at the helm, which eventually ushered in the departure of the Korean strategist. Still, he quickly found a new home.

Shortly after leaving BM Hawk, SUNGMIN spent a short stint as a coach of RunAway and the last nine months as the coach of O2 Blast, who he led to the title of Overwatch Contenders 2021 Season 2: Korea champions in October 2021.

Having proven his worth as a coach in the Challengers scene, SUNGMIN now joins Philadelphia Fusion in the Overwatch League.

The signing of SUNGMIN is only the fourth change Philadelphia Fusion introduced to its Overwatch team since the turn of the year. Moreover, SUNGMIN is the first change to Fusion’s coaching personnel since the signing of J1N and Chara in October 2021.

In January, Philadelphia Fusion already introduced some changes to its roster, with the signing of Kim “AimGod” Min-seok and Kim “Fury” Jun-ho. More additions followed in February, with the addition of secondary support, Kwon “FiXa” Yeong-hun.

With the three signings, Fusion now fields a complete roster featuring six players, including captain Jae-hyeok “Carpe” Lee, DPS players in Jae-hee “MN3” Yoon and Hyun-woo “ZEST” Kim, tank Fury, and two supports in FiXa and Min-seok “AimGod” “Jeff” Kwon.

Fusion may look to sign more players to its roster; however, the organization doesn’t necessarily need to. The OWL rules state that each team must have at least six players in the active lineup, but they can have more.

Although the organization has yet to announce any plans for further additions, we could see Fusion add a strategic analyst. The role has been left vacant since the departure of Joni “Seita” Paavola, who left the team in 2020.

With the addition of SUNGMIN, Philadelphia Fusion now look ready to enter the fifth OWL season, which is slated to start on May 5. This year, the league will introduce changes, including the transition to Overwatch 2.

The new build of the game will see the league move to a 5v5 format instead of the 6v6, which was used in previous years. Knowing that the teams only need five players in any given game, it is possible that Fusion will not look to make any roster changes until later in the season.

Philadelphia Fusion will debut its new roster on May 6, when they clash with the reigning OWL champions, Shanghai Dragons, in the Eastern Division’s first round.