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League of Legends: tales of nostalgia and youth watching the 2014 World Championship

By Calvin Henninger

SANTA MONICA, CA - MAY 25: Simon Fraser University competes against the University of Toronto during the opening round at the League of Legends College Championship on May 25, 2017 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Josh Lefkowitz/Getty Images)
SANTA MONICA, CA - MAY 25: Simon Fraser University competes against the University of Toronto during the opening round at the League of Legends College Championship on May 25, 2017 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Josh Lefkowitz/Getty Images) /
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2014 world championship League of Legends Uzi
BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA – OCTOBER 20: Team Royal Never Giveup play against team G2 during the quaterfinal match of 2018 The League of Legends World Chmpionship at Bexco Auditorium on October 20, 2018 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Woohae Cho/Getty Images) /

The eye of chaos

By the time we sat down, it was well past the time we normally fell asleep.

We held it together – cheering on Cloud9 to their Game 1 victory over Samsung Blue, before coming to the slow realization that they wouldn’t be taking any more games after that. By then, the sun was already peeking through the shades, and we rallied for Hai “Hai” Du Lam’s Zed shenanigans and managed to even get hyped as it looked like Cloud9 would take Game 4 and send the series to a decider. But when the Nami bubble hit three of the remaining members, and we watched our first team crumble, we were all ready to head for bed.

We showered, washed off the chip grease, and got some much-needed shuteye.

Until the next night!

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Fighting every natural urge to close our leaden eyelids, we stayed up to watch all four World Championship Quarterfinals series’, from Royal’s nailbiter reverse-sweep to OMG’s swift 3-0 over Najin. Even after words failed to register in our sleep-addled brains and the pizza began to taste like cardboard and the doors opened and shut down the hallway as people headed out for breakfast, we held our post.

I mean, I think we all fell asleep at some point during the process – I’m not certain, because I was asleep for some of it.

But it was a great experience, nonetheless. One that I wouldn’t trade for the world. The sort of bonding that comes from climbing a mountain, where you’re miserable for 90% of the time, but somehow come out closer with your crew than when you started. We kept each other awake, argued through pick and ban, and cheered one another’s teams on.

After that, we skipped the Semifinals (we’re not masochists), then stayed up the next week for the World Championship Finals. Trying to comprehend the full Korean parade (taking place during their afternoon), followed by a surprise Imagine Dragons performance – drove home the sense that we were in untested waters, and we just sort if sat back and let the whole thing wash over us. I honestly do not remember anything specific about Finals besides the disappointment of seeing Royal fall short for the second year in a row.

Yet there’s something to be said for the experience of it all. This was not a time in my life marked by sharp details and specific, crystalline memories. Rather, this was a time of experience, a weird tidal zone where new, strange events seemed to drift towards me out of the darkness. Those hours spent watching League of Legends with my friends as the rest of the college slept – knowing somehow that this was the one point in my life I could truly enjoy this sort of thing – meant more to me than the memory of the event itself.

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