I have confidence in coaching Korean team and players. I even had more confidence in coaching foreign players in Immortals. So, I took the challenge at TSM.
Frankly, I don’t think I didn’t coach TSM well because I was a foreign coach. In TSM, there were many players that had strong voices. Additionally, I also had to learn a new western coaching style. Furthermore, the meta changed radically at that time. There were lots of things to manage, not only for each player but also between players. That’s why we suffered through a hard time together.
My pride was hurt. But I still didn’t agree with the idea that I lacked the ability to coach a foreign team. I wanted to re-prove myself in America. Even though I received several offers from several other regions, I didn’t want to leave here. I pledged to show my ability in any environment. So, I took a challenge at Echo Fox, again.
To tell the truth, we sucked in scrims. It was really hard from the beginning to the middle of the spring split with Echo Fox. Most of the scrims ended before 20 minutes. Each player played greedily, and we didn’t even know what had to be understood of one another. I told them about the reasons why we needed to understand each other, and how scrims are important.
I didn’t want to set a limit for each player. We opened up with each other and realized our strengths and weaknesses. We had talked about why we didn’t believe in each other. Although it may not have been enough, we had shown some improvements.
Scrims ending in 10 or 20 minutes began to diminish. Even if the game did not work out, we believed each other and focused on scrims until the end. Three weeks ago, we came to the conclusion that we should not be under pressure too much. We thought about how we should value one game, each game, and the process, rather than thinking that we had to go to playoffs. The atmosphere of the team got better.
Solo has a good personality outside of the game. But his fighting spirit is too strong in in-game. If the game doesn’t go to how he thought it would, or if we were in a losing streak, he did a lot of straight talks. He is a style that expresses his feelings directly because of his will to win.
It caused some problems in the team sometimes. So, I talked about this issue with Solo. Yet, on the other hand, I also talked with the other players that, it’s just because he wants to win. Solo needs Faith. The faith that we are a team that could win the game even with some mistakes. A team that could get a chance to win whenever we can.
Solo’s fighting spirit is also his strength. The way he talks to his teammates is not toxic. Not like “We suck. I can’t do this anymore,” but rather just like, “We have to do this. Why we can’t do this?”. Solo has improved a lot about his words.
Rush wants to play flawlessly. The way he plays the game is extraordinarily unique. But he’s a sensitive person. With these facts, he plays weird when the game doesn’t go as well as he thought.
It would be good if the game went as he planned. But even if he were to exclude his own mistakes, there were still many games he couldn’t play as he would have liked or intended, especially during week 1 and 2. So, I limited his creativeness by giving him some options he could choose.
In the middle of the spring split, Rush seemed to have some trouble. Although he had a great will to do well in-game, the games didn’t go as well as he wished. There were a lot of things that gave him pressure. I talked with Rush to solve that problem. I asked him to tell his feelings sincerely and what was going on in his mind.
It was a great help for Rush that Panda played some games instead of him. While he was watching Panda’s performance, he got a chance to review on his own. Rush’s strength comes from his proactiveness. If the environment around Rush helps him, he can concentrate more on himself, and he can grow more than now.
Fenix had many scandals. For example, there was a scandal about internal trouble with the team. He was even released by Echo Fox last season. He just lacked the ability to explain what he wanted to do in-game. So, I told him that “If you want to do something, you need to know how to explain what you want to do for your teammates. You don’t deserve to be angry if you can’t explain it.” For now, he has found enjoyment in explaining what he wants to do in-game.
It’s not true that he is a toxic person. He was just not familiar with explaining himself to others. He has a good relationship with other players and he wants to be a great player himself. He doesn’t want to be a mediocre player in LCS.
Apollo and Hakuho have good synergy with each other. I was surprised by Apollo. He seems like Pray whom I have played with before. He is a player who knows how to encourage his teammates. I want to make him become as great of a player that he wants to be.
He sometimes was intimidated by criticisms like his mechanics not being good. But, he didn’t deserve to be intimidated. He has already shown what he can do. He also has lots of things to show. He needs to be more confident.
I asked him to play more proactively. I told him how to utilize his Jungler, and how to get advantages by using the jungler. Now, he fully understands it and has gotten used to doing it.
Hakuho has really good mechanics, as is known. He also knows the point of the game. However, he is a quiet person so sometimes he can be immature when communicating with his teammates. I told him how important communicating with his teammate is and how good it is for himself. He’s getting better now.
It is no doubt that players feel bad when the game ends in 10 or 20 minutes. Of course, no one wants to end his career at this time. Fortunately, every player in Echo Fox knows their own problems now. Furthermore, we all know the strengths and weaknesses of each other. Now we believe that “Even if we make some mistakes during the game, we can still win when we rely on our strengths.”
The most important thing is that we are getting better. Whether it is a scrim, or a game we played, we are getting better now. This is much more important than going to playoffs or semi-finals. We have potential. We can be as good as the efforts put in. To be that way, we need to value each scrim, each game more than ever.
We defeated Team Liquid this week, Cloud9 last week. The gap is slowly closing and I’m proud. It’s evidence that language is not a barrier in terms of coaching players.
Everyone in Echo Fox, including me, has had their own problems. Everyone who needed to overcome something came together at Echo Fox. For now, we are doing well and we can solve our problems. We want to let people know that we are a team that is more than what is conceived by the public.
Echo Fox, the company, also wants to be like that. The company is also doing its effort to improve itself. And they have improved a lot. I hope that Echo Fox Fans know this. We were immature before, but we have gotten better now and we will show it.
Photo Credit: Riot Games
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