March 16, 2025
The Milk Cup: Winter Split is a series of Fortnite events for women and members of marginalized communities. GonnaNeedMilk, Radiant, and erena organized this event. The series featured two open qualifiers, followed by the December 16, 2024 finals. This was the second installment in the overall Milk Cup series, which began earlier in the year.
The winners of this installment of The Milk Cup were Vader and Ilyynina. Vader took her first win at only 17 years old. We had the chance to ask Vader about her journey!
Vader’s journey to Fortnite’s top
Raidiant: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? What inspired you to go on this esports journey?
Vader: I always remember going over to my neighbor’s house, and we would spend hours playing Minecraft together.
Vader shared she always loved competing as far back as she can remember, but the first time she competed in esports was playing ranked skywards in Minecraft. As she got older, she started playing Fortnite.
“I specifically remember watching the World Cup on my Xbox and wanting to become one of the best players.
Raidiant: Congrats on your big win at The Milk Cup: Winter Split! How does it feel to achieve such a feat?
Vader: It feels amazing to win!
After winning second in Efuse (Women of the eRena featuring Fortnite), second at the previous Milk Cup Finals, and second in numerous third-party tournaments, Vader exclaimed how happy she was to finally get a win under her belt!
The Milk Cup Win
Raidiant: Did you and Nina (ilyynina) have a strategy going into the tournament, and were you able to stick to it once the games started?
While they did have to adapt their strategy here and there, Vader states their strategy going into the tournament was to play aggressively and fight every team until they had the loot they needed to win the game.
On tournament day, we had to adapt to a couple of different challenges such as some teams rotating away from us or knowing that we had the medallion. To combat this, we ended up dropping the medallion and rotating in different ways than what we did in scrims.”
Raidiant: What are your personal highlights from the tournament?
Vader: My personal highlights from the tournament are when we bounced back after a rough start and won game 4. This game got us back on track to win the tournament, and it kept us in a positive mindset.
Raidiant: What’s the most important advice you want to share with those dreaming of making it in this industry?
Vader: The most important advice I want to share is that you should always believe in yourself, always have confidence, and always be yourself no matter what people say.
Raidiant: How much does your community’s support help keep you motivated and focused? Do you have any special shoutouts or messages you’d like to share?
Vader: I would say that most, if not all, of my community, is also a part of or came from Nina’s community and that they are all so supportive and so nice.” She said they always want to see them do well together, and it really motivates them to do their best when going into games and tournaments.
I want to shoutout Vanessa who Nina and I triod with for the LAN tournament. She is one of the nicest people in the comm and an amazing person and teammate. I also want to shoutout our coach Sven who helped us prepare for both tournaments and we honestly couldn’t have done so well without his help.
Vader has continued the tournament grind into 2025, recently competing in the Kneecapper Only Tournament organized by Fortnite player and streamer The PeachCobbler. Vader and her team placed second in this tournament, and I’m sure we can expect to see them pop up more throughout the rest of the year.
We want to thank Vader for her time, and if you wish to follow her on her journey, you can do so on X (Twitter).