Player’s Tribune: “Just one more win, and we could make the playoffs.”
By Fern
I remember my first season playing League of Legends at the collegiate level here at Southern Virginia University. It was…rough. Very rough.
We had some good players on our team, but I was not one of them. Every team we played against was just better. If we didn’t lose individually, we still lost as a team. I was regularly named as the reason (justified, more often than not) that we lost, and I started to get used to losing. I don’t remember how many teams we played that first season in the fall of 2019, but we didn’t beat any of them.
Now, if you don’t know, in collegiate League of Legends every series is a “best-of” series. During the regular season, they’re all best-of-three. If you make it to the playoffs, they start at best-of-three and go up to best-of-five near the top of the bracket.
I remember one series in particular against Virginia Tech. In League of Legends, you can’t surrender a game before 15 minutes have elapsed. Most games last 25+ minutes. We lost in 13. We were so outclassed that all I could do was laugh. I think we managed to make the 2nd game last around 20 minutes, but we were still summarily defeated.
In another series against Johns Hopkins, I actually played really well for the first 10–15 minutes of the first game, but then made some major mistakes that led to us losing.
My second season was more of the same. The only series I remember we won was actually a best-of-three scrimmage against Auburn University’s 2nd string. Officially, I was still winless. Never mind a series, I hadn’t won a single game yet.
At this point, you may be wondering why I stayed on the team for a third season.
You see, joining the team for my first season made sense. When I first played League of Legends at the age of 14, I daydreamed about how cool it would be to join a pro team at some point. Now, I wasn’t delusional. I knew I didn’t practice enough to be good enough to join any actual team, but I still thought about it.
I only played for about 5 months, then my mother pressured me to quit until I finally did. Then near the end of my mission, my zone leader and I stopped at a random convenience store for a short break. During that break, he asked me if I had ever played League of Legends before. I immediately got a very strong feeling that I needed to play League again when I got home. So when I returned home, I did.
When I was invited to join the esports program my first semester here by my then-roommate Spencer Franco, I jumped at the chance. I saw it as both the fulfilment of a childhood dream, and as the reason I felt that I needed to start playing again.
Go winless two seasons in a row, and those reasons aren’t enough anymore. Anyone in the esports program who knows me knows that I’ve been very involved and supportive of the program and its members since it started, but I don’t think they know that I’ve almost quit competing many times.
But I couldn’t quit. It’s not because I liked competing — I don’t know anyone who enjoys losing THAT much — it’s because the program has become my home.
I flew out to Southern Virginia from Tokyo in 2019. Even though I’ve spent a majority of my life in the states, it was still a massive culture shock coming out here. I had to start fresh. I knew nobody, and nobody knew me. Getting invited to the esports program and being accepted into that community was a big deal for me.
The esports program was, and has continued to be, a community I can always rely on. I know they always have my back. It’s a pretty great feeling. I’ve always been a loner, somewhat by choice, somewhat by circumstance, but the esports program is somewhere I can always come back to.
I couldn’t turn my back on that, I couldn’t give up on them. So I kept practicing, and I kept coming back to compete. I think, deep down, I wanted to give the program a win, I wanted to prove to them that supporting me wasn’t a mistake.
I still remember when I realized it had happened.
I say ‘realized’, because it didn’t hit me until three days after the fact. This season, in the opening series of the season, we got our first series win. My first ever series win.
I remember the atmosphere in the room right after we won game two to take the series 2–0. Everyone else was cheering and yelling. It was hype! Me, I just kinda sat there. The only thing I really felt was a small “huh”. I acted happy and everything, so as not to bring the mood down, but I didn’t really feel anything. It was strange.
Three days later, I was sitting in my room at my computer watching the game again, for like the fifth time, and I asked myself, “Why are you watching this again? You’ve seen it so many times already, you already know what happens.”
And then it just hits me. We WON. It wasn’t just one game in a best of three, it wasn’t a series win in a scrimmage, we won in an official, collegiate series. I wanted to yell and cheer and everything right there. I didn’t, since people were sleeping and that would have been strange anyhow, but I wanted to.
The next week, we won again. We were up 2–0 in the standings. I was playing well, and my plays were winning us games, not losing them. The week after that we lost, but even though the team we played was way better than us, we didn’t get stomped. We were actually competitive — in game two at least. We just won’t mention game one.
So we were 2–1, then we won and became 3–1. Then earlier last week as we’re getting ready for the game, our coach drops this bombshell on us. “If we win tonight and next week, we’re in the playoffs.”
Do you understand how that feels? I went from being winless two seasons in a row, to being in contention for playoffs. I don’t even understand how that feels, and I’m the one feeling it.
Sadly, we lost and are now 3–2. But right after we lost game 2, Coach called us together again and said that if we win the next series, we still have a chance to make the playoffs. It’s reliant on other teams winning and losing matches we can’t control, but there’s a chance.
If we win this week, we could make the playoffs for collegiate League of Legends. Right now, that’s all that’s really stuck in my head. It definitely makes it hard to focus in class or do homework, but honestly I don’t mind. We made it.
Don’t get me wrong, we haven’t made it to playoffs yet. What I’m saying is that we’ve made it this far. Those are the only words I have to express any of this. We made it.
I remember right after we won our fourth series and went to 3–1. I was sitting in a car with some of my teammates, just heading to Cook-Out to celebrate, and I said to them, “You realize we’re somehow 3–1 with this team of five players that aren’t even good at the game?”
That wasn’t a dig at anyone on our team, that’s just how it is. We’re not better than the teams we beat, but we’re beating them anyway. We stuck by each other in our team, and somehow managed to put ourselves in contention for a playoff spot against some of the best teams in the region.
One more win, and we could make the playoffs. I really want to take my team there. We’d be favorites for last place, but I would love to take them there anyway.
Just one more win. I don’t know who our opponents will be, and I don’t really care. We’re either taking that win, or I’m leaving everything on the floor trying.
— The League of Legends Varsity Team faces off against the University of South Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 7:30 p.m. The games will be streamed here. Fern’s in-game name is “PleasantPlant”
