At the time of writing this, one of the best supports in the region, a young and very talented player named Adrian Ma just stepped down from current second place roster Team Impulse. Realistically, he didn’t just step down. The organization pressured him out, from the offseason with their attempts at acquiring Team Coast support Konkwon all the way through the season in attempts at replacing him with NA challenger series jungler Heaventime and mid laner Gate, ending in Gate being picked up as a substitute support. In spite of Adrian’s phenomenal regular season performance, of which he was arguably the most consistent performer on a very inconsistent roster, he is now off the team. Yet again, another very promising NA born talent is out of the LCS, although for Adrian it is only for the time being as they’ve stated his stepping down is “temporary”.

The top six teams in the LCS are Gravity Gaming, Team Impulse, Counter Logic Gaming, Team Liquid, Team Dignitas, and Team SoloMid. They currently have one player between all of them who is an NA born player and only joined LCS this year. He’s on Gravity, Hauntzer. The bottom four teams are Cloud 9, Enemy Esports, Team 8, and Team Dragon Knights. They currently have eight players between all of them who only joined LCS this year. Those players are Smoothie, Flaresz, Otter, Bodydrop, Calitrlolz, Porpoise, Slooshi, and Dodo.

That is 9 out of 50 players in the entire league that have less than two splits of experience. A few exceptions here, such as Goldenglue playing in place of Slooshi. He first played for Team Dignitas in Spring 2014, helping stop their biannual late split skid before being replaced by the person he replaced, NA veteran Scarra. Keith joined Team SoloMid as a substitute this split and had some prior experience playing with Team Liquid, he has played one match this split. Stixxay is the official substitute for Counter Logic Gaming, yet has played zero matches, even while Doublelift played a week with an injured keyboard hand. The last time an NA LCS team chose to bring up a challenger player to replace an existing player due to their own poor play was Altec replacing Evil Geniuses ADC Yellowpete. Over a year has passed since then.

So those are the facts. North American teams do not look into their challenger scene for talent. As a player in the North American challenger scene, your only hope in joining LCS is through a challenger team and making it through promotion. You have next to zero chances of an existing LCS organization scouting you, contacting you, working out whatever current contract you may hold, and bringing you in to replace any of their current players.

Why is that? Why do these organizations not reach into the challenger scene? Why do they not even give it a chance? Most would jump at the very easy answer of North America having zero talent worth looking into. You’d be correct in stating North America has less talent than any other major region. Probably has to do with the region having far fewer players overall than Korea, China, or Europe. However, there are plenty of names in the challenger scene right now that have at least some promise to them. Most of them show more promise than two notable players right now in EU LCS that joined this split by replacing their under-performing predecessors, Steve and Godfred.

This split, Roccat replaced under-performing top laner Overpow with a near unknown top laner in Steve. Top laner of a team no one considered even top six in EU challenger, he wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Yet he stuck out to Roccat and they brought him on to replace their under-performing veteran. They took a leap of faith on this, a large risk at replacing a veteran voice, and it has paid off in a few ways. They now sit in contention for a playoff spot so overall the move has been a net positive. Steve’s individual play has been highly questionable and he hasn’t seemed to progress that well, yet they’re sitting in a better position now than they were last split with Overpow. On the same end of the spectrum is a player that had almost zero competitive experience prior to LCS, Godfred. Replacing support Rydle prior to the split, Godfred instantly helped boost a Giants Gaming team that was in relegations last split. Now? That Giants team is in a solid spot to enter playoffs next week and Godfred’s own play has been phenomenal. Their risk in bringing in an unknown player paid off in spades.

So there’s two teams in EU that took risks and it paid off. Why do teams in North America fail to take a risk in replacing under-performing players with new names from their own region? In North America it’s not as if there’s a shortage of under-performing LCS players that have stuck around far past their expiration date. The problem comes in LCS organizations either not wanting to wait for talent to develop. they feel they cannot adequately develop said talent so they can only work with veterans who have already developed as players, or they flat-out do not see the talent in front of their eyes. I’d pin it on all of it.

Organizations don’t want to take a “rebuilding” split like Team Liquid appeared to possibly be forced into whenever Voyboy left the roster and Cop was replaced. Two veteran holes in the line up this past Winter, Liquid decided to forego any NA talent and brought in two imports with a lot of Champions experience between the two of them. With those moves they went from a team that could have seen a drop off in their overall results initially to a team that was put into “win now” mode. You can look at a team like Cloud 9. This team went from top of the table every split to fighting for their lives in relegation talk. They took a chance on a rebuilding path and it back fired heavily. Think other organizations aren’t paying attention to their results in trying to replace a fading, veteran presence in the team?

More than a few organizations in NA LCS have poor support staffs or they have certain people doing something they’re realistically not capable of doing to an acceptable degree. Many individuals are in charge of multiple, wide-ranging jobs for one team all under one title. Popular personalities in the community have commonly stated how they don’t see any talent and how they don’t follow the challenger scene. CLG owner HotshotGG has repeatedly stated in the past how NA solo queue is a joke and how it means nothing. I wonder if someone like him or the people he hires can spot talent? Or take Dyrus asking a rhetorical question in “who is gonna replace me?” right after his pathetic showing at the Mid Season Invitational. The community, personalities in the scene, and players have all convinced themselves there’s absolutely zero talent.

So instead of possibly bringing up younger, raw players to develop them into potentially great players within the region, teams just ignore everyone. Take Goldenglue for example. Had a pretty decent first showing with Team Dignitas after he replaced Scarra back in Spring 2014. He had one bad half super week and they immediately swapped Scarra back into the line up. Was never touched by an LCS team again until Slooshi temporarily stepped down from Team 8 this split. Team 8 started the split 1-5 with Slooshi and has gone 5-5 with Goldenglue in the line up. His play has been fairly solid for someone with little experience. Very rough around the edges and very clearly a raw player, he’s showing that he might deserve a little attention. Will he get it? Doubtful.

Funniest thing about Goldenglue is that he immediately came into LCS and has performed at a very serviceable level, getting better as the weeks go on, and he wasn’t even the best NA born mid in the challenger scene. I wonder what the best NA born challenger players right now could develop into if given the proper resources. Players like Porpoise and Hauntzer entered NA LCS with very little fan fare and have since developed into very good players at their positions, only getting better. So it does make someone wonder what players like Grigne, Keith, Konkwon, Yusui, Moon, Stixxay, Hard, and many more that have stood out in the challenger scene could do if they were given a proper chance. A proper chance like what Steve and Godfred received in EU LCS.

What’s even worse is the mentality of LCS teams has dripped down into the challenger scene, with nearly every challenger team importing players instead of bringing up regional talent. Spots that would normally be filled in by NA born players are now being filled by foreign players as organizations feel it’s a quicker and easier ticket to the grand prize that is NA LCS. The challenger scene has its roots as a playing field where regional players can grow and develop. That is no more as it’s not about growing and developing now. It’s all about fielding a roster that is LCS caliber right that instant and developing regional challenger scene players gets in the way of that. It’s about bringing in imports and fielding LCS veterans that have dropped from previous teams. In the NA challenger series summer split, of the 30 starting players 12 of them are either imported or have multiple LCS splits to their name. 40% of the entire league aren’t even regional players. How does North America ever expect to grow when its proving grounds, the challenger scene, are being comprised of LCS knock offs and imported players.

Then again, who am I kidding? This rant is meaningless. There’s no talent. At least, that’s what older players and personalities have convinced every one of as they scoff at the notion of someone younger potentially replacing them.