North America has suffered a string of heartbreaks at Worlds through the years, and despite numerous opportunities for our faith to die, here we are again saying, “Maybe this is the year.”
IN 2015, I STAYED up all night and attended a viewing party in Los Angeles to watch Cloud9 attempt to advance off their 3-0 group lead from Week 1. They only needed to win one game, and they were ultimately given four chances. They failed four times. By the time I returned to my brother’s couch, where I’d been sleeping for a couple months, the sun was already out and it seemed like even the birds were talking about it. But most people were just beginning their day. It could have ended there.
In 2016, at the 24-minute mark of a game between Albus NoX Luna and Counter Logic gaming, two ANX players walk directly over a CLG ward. They are pinged. And still they catch CLG’s Huhi off guard under his own turret. The game feels more and more like a metaphor for the tournament being at home in America. Then Aphromoo and Xmithie also die trying to respond to the play. ANX takes the Baron immediately after that to essentially ice the game. CLG finishes the group 3-1 against teams from major regions — including a huge victory over pre-tournament favorite ROX Tigers — but are ultimately eliminated because they went 0-2 against ANX. It could have ended there.
Back then, you could have asked any NA player when they might win Worlds, and many of them would have answered, “Maybe next year.” Maybe it should never have started at all.
But it did, and the legend grew. Just a year later, Cloud9 burst onto the NA scene and destroyed everybody to carry a 30-3 record into the World Championship. In the Quarterfinals’ third and decisive match, four mid lane champions were banned. Kassadin was not one. Then, not even two minutes into the game, C9 is caught overextending for early vision and lose two members. It could have ended there.
And then 2014 came around and with it, NA’s best run in the Group Stage ever. Both C9 and TSM advanced to the Quarterfinals — the last time two NA teams did so — but drew the sister Samsung squads from Korea. At the 3:30 mark in Game 4 against Samsung White, with TSM down 1-2 in the series, Bjergsen dies to a four-person gank, and maybe you think a little bit about the irony of the name Team SoloMid. Maybe you are wondering why no one pinged to him that so many enemies were missing. Or why he chose to extend if they did. Or why no one was there to counter the play. TSM would go on to lose, but they were one of two teams to even take a game off SSW that year.
Every year I revisit it, and every year I still expect the Nexus to break. I expect C9 to jump from their chairs to celebrate pushing it a fifth game. And every time I am crushed again. Instead, the camera zooms in on Blue’s jungler, Spirit, who presses his palm against his heart as if to steady it. As if to say even he is briefly a C9 fan in that moment.
After that Worlds, I remember talking to Hai. I said something to the effect of it being bad luck that the two NA teams drew Korea teams, and he said it was more that they drew the wrong Korean teams. At the time, he’d felt that C9 matched up better against White, and TSM matched up better against Blue. Things were on the up for NA — of course I didn’t let it end there.
Fast forward to last year, and you’ll see NA finally managed to follow-up on promises from 2014. No, they didn’t send two teams to Quarters. And yes, TSM got knocked out early again. But when all was said and done, they finished with a combined 17-15 record — their first winning record at Worlds ever. There were tough moments to be sure — Cody Sun’s mangled Tristana play against Fnatic still haunts him, and it will continue to haunt him until he makes a more memorable play. There’s also TSM losing to a winless Flash Wolves to force them into a tiebreaker against Misfits, where they would fail to secure even a single kill until both of their Nexus turrets and all of their inhibitors have already been destroyed. I get that — it could have ended there.
But we haven’t seen double digit wins in years, and C9 even managed to push WE to five games in the Quarterfinals — that’s the furthest an NA team has ever advanced at Worlds. It’s at least further than being a second away from destroying the Nexus in Game 4 like in 2014. And it’s much further than 2015’s 0-10 Week 2. I’ve been thinking about what success would look like for NA at Worlds this year, and there’s definitely a part of me that says the whole point of playing is to win. And there is only one winner. But that’s maybe too black-and-white an approach to this. Success doesn’t have to be so narrow. It could just be accomplishing something you’ve never managed to do before.
And in that case, the next step for NA is to at least make it to the Semifinals. That’s very much within reach. It might be years or a decade or more until NA actually wins the championship itself, and there will be times when your hearts waver, but I think that’s part of what makes being a fan so special. We’ve had a lot of time to build up an image in our heads of what lifting the Summoner’s Cup would actually feel like.
I remember in 2016 — after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years over the Cleveland Indians who haven’t won in 68 years — I celebrated with my friend, a die-hard Cubs fan. I remember being more interested in his reaction than in the end of the game itself, and there are those of you, who like me, have not given up on North America. And you won’t give up no matter how much heartbreak you endure or how much other regions blast you for being bad.
And maybe eventually you’ll see what I saw when the Cubs won that night. My friend promised before the game to give up smoking if the Cubs won that deciding game, and then the game stretched almost miraculously into extra innings. As if it really was being watched by some higher being, and that higher being wasn’t sure if they wanted the Cubs to win. But they did win. And minutes after, my friend stepped outside. When I found him, he was crying on the phone as he was talking to his grandpa about the win, and he was smoking another cigarette.
That’s what I want for this Worlds. I want to be making half-empty, superstitious promises to myself as an NA team tussles back and forth on Summoner’s Rift. I want to see them knocking on a Nexus with only a single second determining whether they win or lose. I want this faith, which could have ended so many times over the years, to keep riding my nerves. And so NA steps up to this proverbial plate again. And so we wait for them to swing. And it won’t end here.
Kien Lam is a writer for Lolesports. You can find more awful great jokes and commentary on his Twitter.