League of Legends: Remembering the Trials of Team Coast
League of Legends Challengers
But as would become the pattern for Coast, their success was short-lived.
Like a year prior, Coast locked in the sixth seed following the League of Legends Spring 2014 Regular Season, heading for playoffs. However, whereas the prior spring had seen them upsetting stiff competition, this season told a very different tale. They started off getting blasted 0-2 by CLG, then went on to drop 1-2 to Dignitas, an org they had defeated in similar fashion the year prior. With this second loss, the team headed back to relegations (yes, the tournament format was bit more convoluted back then).
Now on a full downwards tilt from their first split, the team faced off against compLexity.Black – headlined by future coach Neil “Pr0lly” Hamad in the mid lane. And after a swift 1-3 reaming, their two most talented players – Shiphtur and ZionSpartan (later “Darshan” of CLG renown) – left for greener pastures, and the rest of the team slithered back in the annals of the Challenger Series, never to be heard from again.
Oh, but Coast wasn’t done yet.
From the dispiriting bog of the Challenger Series, the team began to creep back up the rankings. Due to their former LCS position, Coast was automatically placed in the upper bracket of the Challenger Series, bypassing the Play-In Stage altogether. From there, they faced a potential three rounds of Bo3 knockout competition vying for points which would help them during the League of Legends Summer Promotion Tournament.
And so it began. 2-0 over TGF, 2-1 over Curse Academy, then 2-0 over LoLPro. Only dropping a single game throughout the three series, Coast foreshadowed a question the LCS would struggle with for years to come: was this team an LCS-ready roster, or were they simply Challenger-level prodigies, ready to flake apart as soon as the real competition started?
To help silence the critics, Coast set their sights on the Challenger Series 2 of the Summer Split – identical in form as the last tournament which they had dominated. With a solid performance in this tourney, the team would have the chance to take on one of the weakest teams in the Leagueof Legends Championship Series, locking in their spot for the 2015 Season.
For the few people who actually watched the Challenger Series, Coast had massively overperformed in their debut Challenger Split. Was this a fluke, or the metamorphosis of a new LCS talent? The team would be hard-pressed to do better than the last Split.
Hard-pressed, but not impossible.