After a dominant performance in the 2020 LCS Spring Playoffs, Cloud9 spoke to LEC host, Eefje ‘Sjokz’ Depoortere, about their season and the achievements the team has accomplished.
Assistant coach Jonathan “Westrice” Nguyen said he has seen the team grow together as one unit, doing their best to critique each other throughout the Spring Split.
“One of our long-term goals was to have all five players be self-sufficient and be able to do things themselves without having coaches or other staff telling them what to do,” said Westrice. “There’s always transparency.”
In terms of in-game efficiency, head coach Bok “Reapered” Han-gyu found that the team more or less coached themselves. Even with Reapered and Westrice calling the shots in game direction, the team was willing to put their ideas forward on which picks, meta, and plays they should or should not try.
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Seeing as how this is C9’s first major victory in six years, the team’s owner Jack Etienne chimed in on what made this year’s team so great.
“One of the big differences that I’ve seen with this team and teams from the past is that there would be a certain complacency close to the finals, with players not pushing themselves the way they needed to,” said Etienne. “With this team, they were always razor-focused right up to today and that feels really good.”
“I’ve had several championship teams in various games and I can tell you that the drive and focus of these guys are different than the other teams I’ve had,” concluded Etienne.
Looking forward, Sjokz asked the team how they feel moving forward as the new top dog of the LCS. Top laner Eric “Licorice” Ritchie said that “for most of the split, we already had that bullseye on our head. After starting 9-0, we were already the team to beat, so we’ve already done that work of making sure our mentality is in the right place.”
