In the mid-2000s the Cyberathlete Professional League was the centre of competitive Counter-Strike. Its two big events, CPL Summer and CPL Winter, were held in Dallas, and a CPL title meant something everywhere.
Month one
Team NoA was founded on 26 November 2003 by Jonas “bsl” Alsaker, with players from Europe and North America on the same roster. Weeks later, at CPL Winter 2003, the brand-new team reached the grand final and lost to Team SK.
A year of building
2004 was uneven. bsl left the roster in March. NoA brought in Norwegian Ola “elemeNt” Moum two months before the Electronic Sports World Cup in Paris, where they won their first group and went out in the second group stage. At CPL Summer 2004 in Dallas a double-overtime loss sent them home in the 9th–12th places. In between they went undefeated at EverLAN Summer 2004 in Colorado Springs, beating Team EG 13–3 and 13–2 in the final. In September Jørgen “XeqtR” Johannessen joined, and in October knoxville stepped back.
December
At CPL Winter 2004, held in Grapevine near Dallas from 15 to 19 December, NoA won the event, beating the Eyeballers in the grand final. Liquipedia gives the final as 2–1 in its timeline and 2–0 in its results table. Twelve months after losing the final in their first month, they were CPL champions.
The roster that December was Naikon, shaGuar, method, elemeNt and XeqtR. Three months later the same five won the World e-Sports Games in Seoul.
Afterwards
The roster changed many times after that, through a Scandinavian rebuild in 2005 and a Danish one in 2006. NoA won shgOpen 2006 and finished second at ESWC and WCG in 2007. That December its Counter-Strike team merged into mTw. The full story, with sources, is on the history page, and the 2004 squad has its own page.
