As the summer starts to wane and the leaves begin to change color, it is also time to say goodbye to the LCS. Over the past three plus months, we've seen 10 teams battle it out in North America's premiere League of Legends tournament to see who would grab a ticket to compete for the Summoner's Cup. Following Counter Logic Gaming's historic summer victory over fellow Worlds attendee Team SoloMid at Madison Square Garden, the resurgent Cloud9 captured the final spot to the World Championships with a miracle run through The Gauntlet.

While the stories of those three squads still hang in the air for a climax to be written this October, we can now sendoff the seven teams that have had their work on the Rift come to an end for the year. Some of the teams will be able to hold their heads high heading into the offseason with an optimistic aura behind them, and, for the others, well, it's going to be a long four months until the 2016 season kicks off.

Team Liquid

To really put into words how Team Liquid must be feeling after their loss to C9 in the North American Gauntlet finals would involve a wide array of expletives that I'm not allowed to use in this article. As I wrote about in the primer before the qualifier for the final NA spot to Worlds, Team Liquid had to qualify. This was a lineup that, on paper, had everything necessary to make the World Championships and possibly even a Cinderella run to the quarterfinals.

In the first 15 to 20 minutes of the series, TL were a Ferrari. They were fast, glorious to watch speed around the map, and a delight to behold. But under the exterior of the fancy sports car, the engine wasn't anything special. And that was the main problem with Liquid throughout the year: they knew how to get off to incredibly impressive starts in-game, but didn't have the coordination or team synergy in the mid and late-game to actually convert their superior individual talents. By the time the Ferrari tried to cross the finish line, the engine blew out, the tires were flat, and Liquid's dreams of making Worlds for the first time went up in smoke.

Now, after putting together a starting five that were seemingly too good to fail, TL are left in a position where changes are going to have to be made and it's tough to say whether or not that change will come in the form of coaching or players. This was a team that was built to win a North American title and go to Worlds in the footsteps of former Curse squads who failed at the final hurdle.

Maybe next year will be the one where that ultimate step will be taken. Although Liquid did capture their first regular season title, it was all for naught, and this year, like the years before it, will go down as a near success that failed at the very last second.

Team Impulse

For all that went wrong, Team Impulse actually salvaged a split that could have completely went off the rails when their longest tenured player, XiaoWeiXiao, received a suspension for ELO boosting. When everything came to an end against Cloud9 in the Gauntlet semifinals, it was less blaming the team itself and more of a sad realization that if XWX didn't get himself taken off the team that Impulse were all but assured a Worlds seed.

Gate, XWX's replacement, tried his best to fill the shoes of the former NA LCS MVP, but the shifting of priority on the team without one of their main carries damaged the team with too little time to change their ways. XWX's departure forced Apollo to leave his usual role of playing utility-type AD Carries to becoming the main force on the team. Rush could do whatever he wanted in the early parts of games, even ignoring blatant wards and enemies to continue his unrelenting pressure, but the weight of carrying fell on the shoulders of Apollo and Gate, two players who were forced into new roles on a short notice.

As long as Impulse can keep Impact and Rush signed for next season, they'll be fine. Rush is a world-class talent that won the MVP award for the summer, and if the organization can build around their two Korean cornerstones, they'll be favorites to win the Spring Split in 2016.

Gravity

With CLG learning how to finally win in the postseason, Gravity have officially taken the mantle of the new Counter Logic Gaming.

They made some solid changes in the offseason and appeared to be on a direct path to Worlds for a majority of the summer, and then, well, they turned into the old CLG during the final weeks of the season. Their communication and shot calling seemingly fell apart, and Move, their rookie jungler that turned heads with his brilliant vision control, crumbled under the pressure as tensions heightened. What looked like an easy road to a Top 2 seed and a first round playoff bye quickly turned into falling out of the top seed, losing to Team SoloMid in the first round of the summer playoffs, and then getting reverse swept by Cloud9 in the opening contest of the Gauntlet.

This makes it the second season in a row that Gravity have fallen in the first round of the playoffs as they initially lost to Impulse last split and now TSM. Like Liquid, Gravity feel like a team that will make some changes during the offseason. Hauntzer and Altec are two pieces that the team can build around, and we'll have to see if Bunny, who is one of the most mechanically gifted supports in the league, will stick around after a few rocky weeks alongside his AD Carry partner. Move will be another point of contention — were the middle weeks of the split where he looked like the best NA jungler alongside Rush his true potential or is he simply a player that is good on Nidalee and got on a hot streak for a few weeks?

Team Dignitas

Dignitas is another team that can keep their heads high heading into the long offseason. The other two teams that got through promotions last split, Enemy and Team Dragon Knights, were both sent back to the Challenger circuit. Dignitas were one game away from being eliminated from the NA LCS by Team Fusion in the spring, and they held on, winning the last game and then going on a Cinderella run in the summer split that landed them in the postseason. Sure, they got trounced by a superior Team Impulse in the first round, but there is little you can say negatively about a squad who were expected to possibly get auto-relegated and made it all the way to the playoffs.

The biggest question for Dig outside of player transactions this offseason is whether the team will even be under the Dignitas brand come next split. In the European LCS promotions, Dignitas Europe qualified for the 2016 summer EU LCS, the all-Danish side winning the Challenger league. With Riot's rules stating that one company can't own two teams, the UK based organization will now need to decide if they'll sell their longstanding North American team or if they'll ship off their newly promoted European squad.

Even if this is the last split we'll get to see the yellow ghost logo in the NA LCS, all in all, I'd say summer was rock solid for Dignitas.

Team 8

Three things are certain in the NA LCS: Counter Logic will lose in the playoffs, Cloud9 will make the finals, and Team 8 will survive to see another day.

...Okay, two of those might have proven wrong this past summer, but the last one still stands! Team 8, who lost another stomach punch tiebreak on the final day of the season, were forced to play in the promotional tournament to keep their spot in the league. In CaliTrlolz's final match as a member of the team, he stepped up alongside the rest of the squad as they went on to beat Team Imagine 3-1. T8 started out the series shaky by splitting the first two sets, but came back in an improbable victory on the third map to push them to a commanding victory in the fourth set to clinch the series.

No matter their lineup, Team 8 will probably never be world beaters. That's just not who they are. They've always been a scrappy club that share the workload, have a new hero pop up every week, and take games off top teams when they aren't expected to. Unless they somehow hypnotize Flame into signing with them in the offseason or a rich Chinese investor decides to buy the team, they'll probably be back in the middle half of the table next split.

Honestly, though, I'd have it no other way. Team 8 aren't a glamorous team that have shiny Korean signings or wow you with their superstar power. They'll grind out victories, fight tooth and nail to keep their spot in the NA LCS, and will do everything they can to keep the legacy CaliTrlolz built alive come next spring.

Enemy

The Challenger Kings of the 2015 spring circuit, Enemy came into the NA LCS only to get knocked straight out of it. They looked decent for the first few weeks of the season, and it was the middle of the season where the wheels started to come off that led them to their ninth place finish. If it wasn't for Team Dragon Knights' visa issues, it's very likely that Enemy would have been the team to get auto-relegated instead of their rookie kin.

When you look at Enemy's stats, they are the opposite of Liquid. If they could survive through the first 15 minutes of the game, they were relatively decent and could pull out wins from behind. The problem was that a large majority of their games saw them fall behind early before they could even get into the mid-game. There is talent on the roster that is LCS caliber if they work on their early-game weaknesses, and we saw Coast, the team that eliminated Enemy from the playoffs, get eliminated one NA LCS season and come right back the next.

If Enemy are a good organization and squad, they'll take this season as a learning experience. They weren't ready as a team, and outside of Innox, the only non-rookie on the roster, their individual play couldn't stand up next to the rest of the talent in the league. Enemy got knocked out by the bigger, more experienced squads in North America, and now it's their job, with an altered roster or not, to get off the canvas, brush themselves off, and head into spring looking to dominate the Challenger circuit one more time.

Team Dragon Knights

The saddest story of them all. Talent-wise, Team Dragon Knights are one of the Top 5 teams in the North American LCS. Due to visa issues and the team being forced to run the table in the second half of the season to make the playoffs, TDK tried to play the game too fast and too hard. They had countless games where Ninja and Emperor, their two Korean imports who waited half the season to play, played brilliantly in the first 20 to 30 minutes of the game before trying to do too much in the end-game that led to their team's defeat. Give TDK an entire season with their full roster, and they're probably, at worst, around seventh place by the time the season comes to a close.

With TDK being auto-relegated and forced back into the Challenger circuit, it seems unlikely that their Korean carries will stay in North America to play online for half a year instead of returning back to Korea or moving over to China. If only visa issues didn't hold up the team, it could have been TDK instead of Cloud9 we're talking about making the miracle run to Worlds or fighting in the playoffs.

Goodbye, Dragon Knights. You were gone too soon. We'll always have our alternate timeline where Ninja and Emperor play from the first game of the season and help the team win it all en route to a World berth before getting absolutely slaughtered by Chinese and Korean teams in the group stages.

...Hey, we have to be a bit realistic, right?

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for theScore eSports who covers the North American LCS and Korea's Champions.