OpTic to Northern Arena with desi

OpTic were one of the fourteen teams directly invited to the $100,000 Northern Arena event, which will take place from September 1-4 at the Metro Toronto Convention in Toronto, Canada and feature North American, South American, and European competition.

With the group draw for the event having been announced earlier in the day, OpTic were drawn in Group B alongside TSM, Echo Fox, and Luminosity.

However, the Canadian-American-Spanish team will be fighting on the back foot as their new signee Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik (previously of CLG fame) took to Twitter to announce that he will miss the event due to his brother's engagement dinner and that Derek "⁠desi⁠" Branchen will play in his stead for OpTic.

My brother's engagement dinner is during the Northern Arena LAN, therefore @desi_csgo will be ringing for the guys in my place. GLLL!!!

— tarik.... (@noshirt_tv) August 23, 2016

desi most recently played for Winterfox, beginning with his addition to the team in November of 2015 and culminating with his removal in April 2016. The 23-year-old American player also recently finished in 5-6th place at the HTC 1vs1 Invitational.

Out of pure coincidence, tarik is the second player to recently miss attending an event due to a brother's marriage plans, as Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt of Envy will be unable to attend the SL i-League StarSeries Season 2 Finals from September 7-11 due to his own brother's wedding.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter