League of Legends: Remembering the Trials of Team Coast
No team tried harder when it was at its lowest. If effort alone was a metric for success, Coast would have hoisted the trophy.
Team Coast was quite the spectacle during their three years in the League of Legends Championship Series. Anyone tuning in during 2014 and 2015 would notice Coast for one of two reasons:
- They were (without a doubt) the worst team in the LCS and headed straight towards relegation.
- They were fighting through the Challenger series, on their way to renewing their LCS spot.
And… that was it. For nearly three years, this was the story of Coast – the unequivocally worst team in the LCS, and probably the best-ever squad in Challenger. Each year the same story unfolded – the best of our narrative conventions as Coast fell from grace, only to grasp at the threads of redemption from the muck of the Challenger series. Again and again this unlikely cycle seemed to repeat itself, so much that they became known as the rollerCOASTer to me and my friends.
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And while we no longer have the LCS Promotion Tournament, this was Coast’s tournament, for better or worse. And there was something comforting about Coast’s constant presence there, their strength or weakness, their hype or disappointment, the feeling that this was the year the squad would stamp their name back on the LCS, or the quiet dread of another year spent in the Challenger Series. A hint of redemption on the breeze.
This sort of oscillation between excitement and disappointment became a trademark for the team: if they weren’t going up, they were headed towards the dumpster. And in a scene stale with the same storylines – the TSM/C9 rivalry, or the TSM/CLG rivalry – Coast was a breath of fresh air. A familiar breeze from far-off shores. And while they never contended for the NA crown – besides their first-ever split of the LCS – their storyline was one I always watched for.
Stories like this, predicated more on a team’s personal struggles than some sort of contest with an external force, made the League feel bigger somehow. As though there was more to League of Legends than the champion’s storyline. More to the game than winning.