If there’s one thing the Dallas Fuel have plenty of, it’s coaches. Aaron “Aero” Atkins leads the charge as Head Coach, with four additional assistant coaches beneath him. Each assistant coach serves a different role in the team, but the most well-known is popular streamer and Overwatch community figure Justin “Jayne” Conroy.

After more than a year streaming from home and coaching various teams at different levels of competition – including Team Canada in the 2018 Overwatch World Cup – Jayne finally got a taste of the highest level of play when he joined the Fuel for the 2019 season. Reflecting on the year so far, however, it’s certainly not all been easy. “I knew it was going to be a lot of time, but I still underestimated how much time it was,” he says with a laugh. “And it’s not just a lot of time, it’s a lot of very mentally fatiguing time, especially as coach.”

“I like to focus on the micro, the nitty gritty stuff … Even if they’re pro players, OGE still needs to work on his fire strikes. There’s 6 people clumped up, who do you fire strike? That’s very, very simple stuff, but someone still needs to focus on it.”

Even though they’re not playing in scrims, coaching can be equally as draining with the same, if not more, hours of work per day. “You have to be tuned in, brain on at the same power level as the players, otherwise you’re not gonna catch mistakes or you’re not gonna understand why people did something.“

“We usually try and take one day off a week, so it’s like a six day work week, but it always turns out to be a seven day work week, one way or another. So it’s definitely been a big, big grind. It’s more of a time commitment than I thought it would be, so I would like to make more content than I currently am, but the team comes first.”

However, Jayne’s presence in the Overwatch esports scene also goes way beyond his role at the Dallas Fuel. When he’s not streaming educational Overwatch content or making humourous videos covering new patches, Jayne has also started a whole organisation, Elo Hell Esports, that manages and streams tournaments at lower levels of competition. For example, console players and lower-ranked PC players can find tournaments to compete in through Elo Hell, who organise, advertise and broadcast them online. Likewise, those who aren’t interested in competing, and just want to watch more competitive Overwatch, now have access to fully casted and broadcast Open Division and Contenders Trials matches thanks to Elo Hell.

Although the project was spearheaded by Jayne, when it comes to the day-to-day operation, he tries to leave it to others. “I try to manage as little of that as possible. Jennifer “LemonKiwi” Pichette and Peggy “Moirai” Forde manage the production side of things, with the contracts we handle with Blizzard. So if I do have to go offline for two days, everything is still going to keep turning. I’m still the person at the helm of the ship, steering where we go and giving overall creative direction. But the actual doing and liaising with other people, and the day-to-day operation, I don’t have to be involved with.”

Allowing others in the community to step up and create a community under one banner was one of the reasons Elo Hell Esports was started. “There was nobody really else doing it in the community other than myself at the time, and there were a lot of people very interested in volunteering to make these things a reality. But they didn’t really have a banner to unify under. So making [Elo Hell] was a way that people could still have good efforts put into a constructive, productive and positive direction without my presence being required. That was one of the reasons that Elo Hell turned itself into a proper organisation, and it’s worked out. It does pretty amazing things.”

When it comes to the Dallas Fuel, Jayne’s own role in the coaching staff has been moved around over the last few months. “We’ve moved the roles around a little bit since DaemoN joined. DaemoN joined originally to be the tank coach, to fill the void that Cocco left, when he left the team. But when DaemoN arrived, it was very quickly apparent to us that his strength was in strategy not in micro. So I took over the tank coaching with NotE and OGE primarily, and Vol’Jin moved over to support coaching.”

“But even then, I like to focus on the micro, the nitty gritty stuff. I don’t really deal with strategy or compositions. As an assistant coach, I like to assist the other coaches, including the other assistant coaches. So I’ve been putting a large amount of my time into things like data, analytics, scouting, micro-corrections. Even if they’re pro players, OGE still needs to work on his fire strikes. There’s 6 people clumped up, who do you fire strike? That’s very, very simple stuff, but someone still needs to focus on it. It will change and there are optimisations in the very fine details. So that’s where I’ve kind of been exerting the vast majority of my efforts.

“I would handle things, if it were up to me, in a militaristic way. But we’re dealing with 18 year olds. In some cases this is their first job, this is their first time in a professional environment. I don’t think people would actually like the way that I would resolve problems.”

When it comes to coaching specific metas, Jayne sees them all as an equal challenges. “At heart, my formal training is engineering, and engineering teaches you to treat everything like a problem. So GOATS is just a problem that has a little bit more emphasis on teamwork and communication side of things rather than the mechanics and positioning side of things. So no, the composition doesn’t really matter when it comes to coaching.”

However, one of the more difficult aspects of the season has been working as an assistant coach, not a head coach. “I have coached in-person before. I had a previous job as a flight instructor. I’ve had three different careers as an educator, in one way or another. But the biggest struggle I’ve had, since I’m not the head coach… Everybody has a different approach to solving a problem and I’ve had to defer to Aero’s resolution to a problem.“

“When things come in to inter-personal relationships with something like that, I have a military background. So I would handle things, if it were up to me, in a militaristic way. But we’re dealing with 18 year olds. In some cases this is their first job, this is first time in a professional environment. I don’t think people would actually like the way that I would resolve problems. So that’s been a problem as well: not only not being in a head coach position, but having to defer to another individual’s coaching style. I have not previously worked in a coaching position where I’ve been so closely working with another individual in a coaching role. Normally my coaching and instruction is a solo gig.”

The Dallas Fuel are currently 10-7 in the Overwatch League standings. Their next match is later today, against the Vancouver Titans. You can view the full Overwatch League schedule here.

Featured image provided by Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment.

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