The Overwatch League signs its first female coach

Washington DC's new, as-yet-unnamed Overwatch League team has announced the signing of Kyoung Ey Molly "AVALLA" Kim as its assistant coach. Kim, a top-100 player on the Korean Overwatch Ladder who has also served as an assistant coach for OpTic Academy and Meta Bellum, will be the league's first female coach. 

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DC also signed analyst Mikael "mkL" Skjønhaug, previously of the Overwatch Contenders team Last Night's Leftovers. Prior to that, Skjønhaug worked with Kim as an analyst during her time with OpTic.   

"I'm happy to have AVALLA and mkL join the coaching staff," head coach Hyeong-seok "WizardHyeong" Kim said. "They bring international experience and a great work ethic. Together, we're well on our way to building the best coaching staff in the league."

Mikael "mkL" Skjønhaug, to clarify, is not Michael “mykL” Padilla, who earlier this week posted a video on YouTube accusing Washington DC general manager Kate Mitchell of "scamming players and coaches" by enticing them to leave their current teams for a position with DC, but then not actually offering them jobs. The team denied the allegations in a statement sent to Unikrn, saying that it has "an official process for making any offers to be part of our team," and that while Mitchell has been speaking with potential candidates, "we did not make any official offers that were rescinded." Padilla has since walked back the claim.

Thanks, Dot Esports.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.