Like many of his peers, rapha took interest in sports when he was younger. Although, he concedes that though he wasn't LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, he still rates himself as a fairly good basketball player. More importantly, he gathered valuable experiences from playing.

"Any sport in general will teach you the importance of fundamentals and the huge role that they play in terms of being successful or not. I noticed this same aspect with Quake, how important it was to get the fundamentals down and master them, because when you're having an off day, you can always fall back on them. It becomes second nature to you."

One of the things rapha often highlights when asked about his strengths, is his ability to think ahead. Ahead of the game, ahead of the action, and ahead of his opponent. In an interview on SK-Gaming.com, he once said he could be up to five steps ahead of his opponent. However, as rapha crashed out of his first International tournament on the group stage, the quote came back to haunt him.

The Rockford kid remained unaffected though; he still believed he was on the right track.

Just a few months later, rapha defeated the reigning number one player in the world, Cypher, at the ESWC Grand Finals 2008 in one of his first games of the event. Suddenly no one was making fun of him anymore.