Clutch Gaming finished the Spring Split in ninth place, only one ahead of the last place 100 Thieves. The team tried shuffling players around at the end of the split to no avail, missing the playoffs for the second split in a row.





Over the offseason, the team announced former Academy marksman Cody Sun would be stepping into the starting lineup in an attempt to recreate the magic surrounding the team when it upset longtime Finals participants TSM in the quarterfinals last spring.





We spoke with mid laner Tanner Damonte to talk about Cody’s integration with the team, which mid laner he looks up to the most, and what we can expect from Clutch coming into the Summer Split.





Interview performed by Aaron Mickunas; article written by Brian Chang.





Your teammates told me that you guys are trying some new stuff for summer, why don’t you walk me through what that means.





Damonte: Yeah, I think we’re embracing our own playstyle now. Last split, we tried to be something that we weren’t. I think this is something a lot of people don’t actually know about me is that I really prefer playing the game super fast, super mechanic-heavy, super lane-heavy. It’s not something I’ve been able to showcase in the past, because when I joined Echo Fox, I had shoes to fill on the team. I had to fill a role basically, and then at the beginning of Clutch I wasn’t really confident enough to tell my team how I wanted to play the game.





Also, we had a lot of other issues in the team because everyone’s mentality was really poor in spring, and now for summer I feel like I’m coming into my own more now, and I’m able to speak up a lot, play the game how I want to. I’m kind of leading the team a bit more now, whereas before I feel like I was kind of watching the team and just following. This is what I feel natural in. I feel like I’m naturally a leader, I naturally want the game to be played at my pace and do what I want to do. I think we’re no longer trying to be players that we’re not. We’re just all doing what we think is good.





Photo via Riot Games





What’s your experience in trying to be a leader on a team like Clutch, since you have a pretty diverse roster?





Last split, it was quite the struggle trying to get respect from all of my teammates. I think just the personalities didn’t really match very well, to be honest, and that created a lot of tension in the team, but so far we’ve been training for a week and a half with Cody. Vulcan and Cody are able to talk to each other freely and openly about anything. If they mess up, then they’ll both talk about it, whereas before, the bot lane wasn’t really like that. They wouldn’t talk to each other ever. It’s just hard to get respect from a Korean player who won Worlds. They want to be the leader. It makes sense, Piglet is a really insane player. He’s super talented, but things weren’t going the team’s way, so it wasn’t working out very well.





My best split ever was my Academy split with Echo Fox Academy, and there’s no doubt in my mind that that was my team. That’s how I felt. I was the leader, I was the captain. Everyone rallied behind me and I’m finally feeling like that in an LCS team now. Honestly, it’s a bit different. Obviously I have Huni, and Huni’s also a natural-born leader. He’s very similar to me, but we work very, very well together, so we kind of go hand-in-hand. Lira is the shy guy, but when he does speak, everything is super meaningful, so we have a really good dynamic now, especially if Vulcan and Cody Sun are able to really mesh well together. I feel like me, Lira, and Huni are already so strong as a top side that all that we need now is them two to get more time playing together.





Do you think subbing out Piglet is what you guys need to get over the communication hump?





Yeah. I think just a new face, a new voice on the team has been helpful. Obviously at the end of Spring Split they tried to put Piglet mid and Cody on AD to try and see if mixing it up would make the team feel better, and obviously it didn’t work out. This split we tried this roster and so far everything’s been great. We’ve been doing really, really well in scrims, and now we just have to translate it into the stage, which was a problem for us last split. We did well in scrims last split, but we just weren’t able to show it on stage.





Is there anyone in the LCS that you look to learn from that is a leader already?





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I would say I copy a lot of what Bjergsen does. I have a very close friend in Akaadian and he talks about Bjergsen very highly. It’s very obvious to me that Bjergsen leads that team and everyone looks up to him. I get glimpses of it when I watch TSM Legends and also I know Bjergsen myself, so I talk to him about what I can. Just the way he plays the game, the way he holds himself, the way he just handles his life is very admirable and it’s something I look at. I just want to copy him because you have a lot of mid laners in the LCS who play a very selfish style. They just play for themselves, they just play to make themselves look good, but that is not how you win titles. That’s not how you go far at Worlds. You have to be an all-around player, and that’s what I see out of Bjergsen. He’s able to just do everything. If the meta changes, he’s instantly able to adapt, and that’s what I want to strive to be.





Do you think that’s something you can reach in the near future, or do you think that’s something only years and years of experience can land you at?





I think in the near future I can reach the level of being a great player. I think it’s going to take years for me to reach the level of commanding the same respect that Bjergsen commands from his team, since obviously he has titles to back it up. He has years and years of LCS play to back it up, and that’s something I don’t have since I’ve only played LCS for six months now. It’s going to take time, but in the near future I’m still going to be able to showcase that I’m a great player.









Let’s talk about summer a little bit. You guys have shifted the bot lane, you’re playing a little more aggressive. Do you think that this combo can take on Liquid, Cloud9, TSM?





Most definitely. I think we’re able to take on any of the top three teams. What we’re struggling with right now is something that you kind of saw iG struggle with actually in their match with Team Liquid—inconsistency. It’s very obvious in that match that iG is a very, very strong team, and a lot of people said that iG is the better team, just on that day they were very inconsistent with what they did. They didn’t play well.





That’s something we’re struggling with right now as well. One game we’ll finish at 18 minutes and then the next we’ll lose in 18 minutes. As soon as we’re able to find a consistent line in our games, we’re going to be able to look like teams like iG, like G2. We have a late start at it since we didn’t really practice that well in spring, but if we’re able to really focus on it and hone our skills, we definitely can do it.





Both iG and G2, they fight a lot and they fight often. So you’re saying the answer is to develop this fast, aggressive mentality, but that you guys need to hone it?





That’s what you see in all these teams. IG and G2 are the best examples of how you would expect Clutch to play this year. Sometimes they’ll go for the play and it’ll go extremely wrong, and it’s a good thing. You will learn from it. As long as you’re able to make the correct call seven times out of 10 rather than three times out of 10, it’s just going to be that much different, because once that does go well, then the game is impossible to play for the enemy team.





How are you guys trying to improve awareness, being a little more cautious when pushing up?





I think we’re just embracing that playstyle now. Huni died a lot to that stuff in the past because no one really had his back. I imagine if we have five Huni’s on one team then everyone is going to feel so pressured. That’s what we’re striving for. The playstyle is really you’re balancing the entire game on a knife’s edge. Let’s say you mess up, then your game is going to be really sad, but if you’re able to pull all the pressure from the other team into your lane and still come out even or ahead, that means the other side of the map should be winning now, too.





Is Cody Sun coming into this speedy playstyle as well pretty easily, or have you had to work through some hiccups?





It just depends on how we’re drafting. Cody is able to play both of these styles really easily. He’s been in the team flawlessly so far. There haven’t really been any issues where he doesn’t want to play the same way that we do. When we draft him something that we rely on him to go forward with and be aggressive and we’re getting him the help, he’s been able to carry. When we’re not drafting him something like that, he’s able to play safe and let the top side of the map and do their thing and carry the game.





Do you think that Cody seems confident in his play now, after a couple splits of hard times?





If it affected him at all, it’s just giving him more motivation. Everyone goes through bad times in their career, everyone goes through great times in their career, and he’s gone through both now. He played on so many great teams and then he kind of hit a low. Now he’s back, and he wants to get back to where he was before. He has everything he needs on this team to get back to that level, and so far he’s been giving us everything we need to also get to that level as well.