FlyQuest went a middling 10-9 during the Spring Split despite the offseason addition of three-time NA LCS champion Eugene “Pobelter” Park to the mid lane. In fact, the last-minute tiebreaker win over Golden Guardians was the only reason the team finished above .500.





Expectations weren’t through the roof for the team even before beginning the split, but a 3-2 victory over GGS in the first round of the playoffs helped build hype around a squad composed of a mix of old-school veterans and newcomers to the scene.





We caught up with support Juan “JayJ” Guibert before the playoffs began to discuss what it takes for FlyQuest to win the split, how the team deals with adversity, and integrating rookie Omran "V1per" Shoura into the team.





Interview performed by Darian Ngo; article written by Brian Chang.





Are you excited to be going into playoffs?





JayJ: Yeah! I think we have a pretty decent chance, and we scrim the top teams all the time and we take games off them so I’m sure that we can do well. Playoffs is all about planning for the other team, and obviously the better team wins every time, so there’s no excuses anymore. We just want to put out the best team we can be and see how it goes.





Is there anything special you’re practicing?





Photo via Riot Games





Not really. I wouldn’t say anything crazy, just the same stuff everyone else is practicing.





Is there anything that you’re excited for about playoffs?





Playing best-of-fives is pretty exciting because that’s when you can really exploit draft, because you’re playing the same team over and over again usually with switching sides back and forth. If you messed up the draft in the first game, you tweak it how you want, and if they have a counter to that, then it’s just really back and forth. It’s more like chess than actual League when it comes to draft in playoffs. Obviously gameplay is still super important, but I kind of like thinking about that part of it, like “What can we tweak every game to make sure we’re one step ahead of the other team?”





What do you think FlyQuest needs to do to win this split?





I feel like we generally have pretty good early games. We just make pretty random, stupid mistakes or we’ll overcommit on a bad fight and things like that. Really, it’s kind of cliché but just clean up the small things that we screw up on and if we didn’t have those things to clean up on then we would have been number one in the regular season.





Is there anything you’re doing to fix those little mistakes?





Photo via Riot Games





Well, it’s hard, because a lot of the little mistakes are habitual, and so if you do it in scrims over and over again but you’re not really thinking about it then you’re not going to break that habit. Just trying to keep an active mind while you’re practicing and trying to realize you’re making the same mistake over and over I think is the best thing you can do to fix small mistakes.





Personally for you, is there anything you did to develop that?





Not really. I went to college, so you learn how to learn. I didn’t graduate, I was there for two and a half years at the University of Toronto, but I feel like my time there helped me in becoming a better player and realizing how I can make myself become a better player.





How would you rank yourself against other supports in the league?





Right now, I think I still have a decent amount to learn, and like I said clean up small things, but I think I put myself pretty solidly as fourth underneath, in no particular order, [TSM support Andy “Smoothie” Ta], [Cloud9 support Tristan "Zeyzal" Stidam], and [Team Liquid support Jo "CoreJJ" Yong-in].





Let’s move away from the gameplay. Who are you closest to on the team?

Never miss a moment in esports. Match notifications, latest esports news, and more. Get the Upcomer app now.





Well, I’m really close to all the Academy guys just because we were on Academy together and we went to the University of Toronto together, so I have a pretty good relationship with them. On the main team, probably [jungler Lucas "Santorin" Tao Kilmer Larsen]. We don’t hang out a lot outside or anything, but we both are constantly playing solo queue and we’ll order food late at night together and just talk about random stuff, so probably him or V1per from the main team.





How’s it like playing with V1per since he’s so new to the team?





V1per is pretty good I think. He just makes a lot of bone-headed rookie mistakes. He’s been working on them all split so I think as long as he irons them out come playoffs we're alright.





Were you excited that he was joining the team?





Photo via Riot Games





Yeah! When I heard he was joining the team, I knew it would obviously be tough at times because as someone who has been a rookie recently, I know that there’s so many new things to learn. For sure at the start of the split his mechanics could carry through and still make him a good enough LCS player, but as the season went on I think he realized that there are so many things that other top laners do that he doesn’t, or the top top laners. I think he’s been working on those pretty well for the most part.





Have you helped him with the transition to being on the main roster since you went through that recently?





A little bit. I gave him a couple of general advice. The biggest one that I tried to tell him that he’s still working on is having a consistent sleep schedule. It sounds like not that big a thing, but when you wake up at 9am every day, which isn’t that early, and then on your off day you sleep in until one or 2pm., then the next day you’re obviously not going to sleep very well. That’s something that he was doing and I noticed he was doing, and I told him if he wants to be productive on the day after off day, then he needs to keep a consistent sleep schedule. I think he’s done it more now, stayed more consistent recently, but he still slips up every once in a while. I think that was the biggest piece of advice I tried to give him.





What’s your sleep schedule like?





So scrim days, I wake up at like 8:45 every day and I try to go to bed by 12, 12:30 at the latest. On LCS days I try to only let myself sleep in an extra hour at most because I don’t want to screw it up for off day. Off day as well, I only try to sleep in an extra hour, hour and a half at most, because otherwise my Tuesday will be really rough, or Tuesday scrims will be really rough for everyone, not just me.





Do you still get nerves playing on stage?





I think I get more nerves playing against lower-tier teams than higher-tier teams, because then there’s more of an expectation that we should beat these guys in theory because we are the better team. When we play TSM, TL, C9 I don’t feel as much pressure and I feel like I can play more freely, which I think can sometimes be a bad thing because a little bit of pressure is good.





What do you do to get rid of the nerves?





Photo via Riot Games





Nothing really. I just try to remind myself that being nervous is completely normal and once you get in game, it might not entirely go away depending on how important the match is, but it mostly goes away. At least, the actual nerves and you don’t really feel it as much. It’s still maybe in the back of your head a little bit, but I don’t think it affects me too too much.





How do you think the team environment has changed from the beginning of the split, with the additions of Pobelter and V1per, to how it is now?





I honestly don’t think the environment has changed that much. We’re all generally pretty chill dudes outside of the game, but come scrim time of course we can be hard on each other. I think that’s really good. Whenever I make a mistake in lane, [AD Carry Jason “Wildturtle” Tran] isn’t afraid to say like, “You really just inted here,” and I’ll be like, “Yeah, you’re right. There’s no excuse for it.” I like that about our team environment. We can be pretty blunt but once scrims are done no one’s feelings got hurt.





How do you deal with the rough weeks of LCS?





We had a 0-4 slump during the season, and that was pretty hard on us. Because until then it was generally pretty smooth sailing, it made us realize that if we want to make playoffs and do well then we all have to put in as much effort as we can. We had already been triple-blocking [scrims] decently, but now we’re consistently triple-blocking two to three times a week. I think we’ve generally been more focused in the last half of the split than we were in the first half.





Is there anything else you’d like to say to your fans?





Thank you for supporting FlyQuest if you’re still a fan of us. Hopefully we can do you guys proud in playoffs. I know last year we didn’t do so hot, so this year we’re looking for redemption.