UCLA League of Legends Premiere Gears Up for 2018 Riot Collegiate Season
- Cole Schwartz and Sunny Yen
- Jan 19, 2018
- 3 min read
The 2018 League of Legends season has officially started and competitive matches are just around the corner. With a completely brand new roster, including freshman Ryan "Rydragon" Ling roaming the mid lane, the UCLA Bruins A team will battle it out on the rift in Riot’s Collegiate Championship against other powerhouse schools in the Western Conference and North America.
For a college team that used to feature current profressional players, such as William "Stunt" Chen and Rafael "Rakin" Knittel, UCLA has fallen short in Riot's annual League of Legends Collegiate Championship. In 2016, the team lost Chen to Team Ember halfway through the season and was forced to replace him with William "Wutswrong" Jeong, a starter for the UCLA CS:GO team. With a weakened roster, UCLA would be eliminated early in the tournament.
2017 would end in a similar fashion. UCLA had a roster full of master tier players, such as Anthony "5mi" Hong and former pro David "LightSludge" Hong, but still lost early in the tournament to UC Irvine's powerhouse team. All players on the 2017 roster graduated or stepped down from competitive collegiate play, so UCLA League of Legends A Team begins the 2018 season with a blank slate.
After 2 days of tryouts under the supervision of manager and team captain Austin "BestLucianAfrica" Quon and LoL analyst Jason "Reavered" Zhao, 5 players stood out and were selected to be UCLA's League of Legends Premiere representatives.
This new UCLA team lineup reflected on how they felt about the season and how they have been practicing.
Top Laner Curtis “XcOuNtEr sTr1kE” Xuan said that adjusting to the team environment has been easy because of his experience on other teams and his teammates’ encouraging attitudes. "The team atmosphere has been pretty troll and savage as f---" he said, "but we all get along very well and we're learning the new meta and learning how to play together."
Jungler Mac “BlackChutney” Chandrahasan said that each player is talented, and the team will work together to use each member’s individual strengths to succeed. Communication issues can often affect relatively new teams negatively, but Chandrahasan believes that the team's weekly scrims have given them the practice they need to challenge the powerhouses at the conference.
UCLA League of Legends A Team has practiced for matches by playing both Solo and Flex Queue together. The team also has watched professional play and scrimmed against other teams to predict what this competitive season’s meta will look like. This has included a scrim against UC Irvine, featuring current and former professional players on scholarships.
"We learned a lot of things playing against that team," said mid laner Ryan "Rydragon" Ling, "mostly mechanical things that can really become issues in competitive games. For example, I know I personally struggled against [UCI's mid laner] Descraton, so I will be working more on my trading in lane."
Team A members feel that facing these strong opponents have helped improve their performance.
"Practice has really helped me improve as an individual player and a team player” added Ling. In limited solo queue games, Ling finished the season in Diamond 5, but has quickly climbed to Diamond 3 in the preseason under the guidance of the higher ranked players on the team.
UCLA A debuts their hard work and roster Friday, January 19th, and will open their season against University of California, Merced. Stay tuned on the Esports @UCLA Facebook and Twitter pages to keep up-to-date with the latest news about your UCLA League of Legends Premiere Team!
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