Nicholas or Nick "Inero" Smith is a coach for League of Legends EUCS Team - Mousesports. He's 21 year old from North Carolina, USA who has moved to Europe to work for Mousesports. He started coaching a year ago and joined up the lineup with Mauno "Beansu" TälliNick and Daniel "Dan" Hockley. Nick "Inero" Smith has recently showed us what it means to be a good coach and how to train the team as efficiently as possible, and he's here to share his thoughts with us.

Image courtesy of flickr.com/photos/mousesports

What made you fall in love with League of Legends and eSports?

Inero: I guess I fell in love with eSports through Call of Duty. I played it competitively back in MW/MW2 days every day when I was home from school. I love competition, and since I wasn't allowed to play sports in school, this is what I replaced it with.

Honestly, at first I hated League of Legends. I started playing in Season 2, quit the game because I was terrible at it and went back to the shooters. I came back at the end of Season 3 once Call of Duty started dying out more and eventually got addicted.

When you first started with gaming and eSports, have you ever thought you would make it this far or is it just a dream come true?

Inero: As a kid I always dreamed of playing games for a living, but I guess most did. If you told me in Season 2 I'd be doing anything professionally in League of Legends, I'd laugh. I was sitting somewhere around 700 MMR at the time and playing stuff like AP Leona every game. Wasn't until I got Master Tier 2 years later that I figured I was good enough to do anything.

How did jour job affect your life? Did it change you in any way?

Inero: It didn't affect my life at all initially. I wasn't getting paid before I joined Mousesports, so it was just a nighttime hobby while I worked at a park in Florida. Once Mouz signed me and Dan, it opened up the option for me to move to Europe, which has been pretty amazing.

What does a typical day during the season look for you?

Inero: A typical day last season:

- watching Solo queue with whichever players were up at the time,

- scrims, which were usually 2 different 3-hour blocks starting at 2pm and ending 9pm,

- update the team google doc with stats and etc for the day's games.

Pretty simplified but it would be kinda pointless to go into more. A lot of mundane details, haha.

What are your plans for the future, where would you like to be a few years from now?

Inero: In a few years I'd love to be doing something eSports related still. If not, I have a job in Florida to fall back on and a lighting design gig, but I'd much prefer to keep working in this industry.

Image courtesy of flickr.com/photos/mousesports

What are the lineup plans for Mousesports? Any changes coming?

Inero: Lineup will include a new mid and support. Beansu, Dan, and Sedrion have already re-signed and will return for next split.

As a coach who works with players, how do you feel about the low job security for pro players (e.g. the old Coast lineup replaced by NRG)? Does it also affect coaches?

Inero: To be honest, I feel like it doesn't affect most players that much. If you sign a bad contract, there are always options to get screwed over, and players should be looking out for that, or have a competent person to check stuff over for them. It sucks for players that don't read the contract before hand, and yeah it's really scummy, but I don't think job security is that bad with the way the challenger scene is improving.

Preseason and season 6 changes are bringing us lots of new stuff to think about. What do you think of them and in your opinion, what more could’ve been done to improve the game?

Inero: I think the changes so far this preseason are great. The games are a lot faster and much more enjoyable to watch. This is a good move by Riot if they want to keep League of Legends watchable. The only thing I'm concerned about are the minion changes they plan on putting in, but I don't know for sure yet how that will affect everything. I think the games are fast enough as it is, and it might be unnecessary to speed them up even more. Not really sure what I'd add to improve the game either, I really like the games I've played and watched so far in the preseason.

Aside from coaching, what do you do in your free time?

Inero: Right now I just try and spend time with my s/o when I'm not working. If I'm not with her, I'm probably just playing more League to be honest, haha!

If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

Inero: Oh man, that's always tough to do. I guess loyal, competitive, and inexperienced? Loyal, because I'll stick by and do anything for the people who have faith me and who I feel like have the desire to succeed. Competitive, because I care way too much about winning. I don't like being given success, which is why I really want to build my way up to LCS with Mouz. Inexperienced, because I'm relatively new to coaching/analysis and I know I'm not amazing at it yet.

Any words for your friends and fans?

Inero: I love my friends, especially the ones that somehow still follow me on twitter, that have supported me through the past year; it's been a really great experience so far and I'm going to make sure I can keep it going. All the Mouz fans are great as well, and I hope we can get to LCS this year to thank them for their support.