Daniel Golzmann · @D4nKa1
21st Aug 2019 from TwitLonger
Pride & Ultraliga
Hey Twitter,
exactly 1 week has passed after I have lost against IlluminarGaming in the Playoffs of Ultraliga. I thought I should write about my story with PRIDE and the Ultraliga in general. There is no TLDR at the end and I didnt check my Twitlonger for any mistakes
At the start of the summer split I had some problems regarding teams, as some of you might know. I was supposed to join the German organization BloodrainGaming with pretty good preparation in the offseason and a lineup, with which we may or may not could have surprised many other teams. Long story short, the Organization lost its spot in the German ESL Meisterschaft and every contract got released. Following that I joined a French organization named Hegemonia, with which i only stayed for about a month aswell. After these 2 events I thought i would not be able to play in any team since most leagues had already started. I got some offers but I declined all of them till the end of June / start of July where I got in touch with PRIDE.
Since PRIDE didnt have much success with their last jungler they were going to replace him. I got contacted by Color, with whom I was already supposed to play at BloodrainGaming. He introduced me to the coach (Mauro), with whom I had some talks before the first tryout. And to be honest the tryout games were really bad. I didnt perform to my maximum and so did my teammates, atleast from my perspective. I had the feeling that the players werent disciplined and would only play for fun and make jokes in the voice comms rather than tryharding. If I am honest I wasnt going to join the team at the first place but after I have received very positive feedback from the coach and the players I changed my mind and signed the contract. It turned out that the behaviour in the tryout was due to tilt and demotivation, since the team had lost most of their games in the first week of Ultraliga. After finally joining the team I was looking forward to finally play and scrim as much as I used to. We had about 3 scrimblocks before our first match against Illuminar, so I didnt expect much from my first game.
I wasnt really nervous or anything like that before the game against Illuminar. I wanted to make a good first impression in my Ultraliga debut and not let my team down. I picked Lee Sin, one of my best champions, if not my best champion. The team had trust in me, the coach had trust in me and most importantly I was trusting myself to carry with Lee Sin. And I did it. 100% kill participation and every objective possible in the game. MVP of the game. It was an amazing first game. Twitter was loaded with positive comments about me and my team. Even some known players or casters were tweeting about me, I was blessed in this moment and really happy.
After the win everyone was motivated. The scrims were going better and better. We managed to win against Wisla Plock, Pirates and most importantly, Rogue. PRIDE was the only team to take down Rogue in the Ultraliga Season 2. Even though it wasnt a clean game nor a great performance by me, Im still happy about that achievement. Everything looked really great till...
Well I guess everyone knows what I am going to write about now, Yashiro and his competetive ban. After Veigar v2 posted his tweet about Yashiro being toxic and racist in soloq, I knew this would end bad for him. And it did. Many negative tweets about him, people blaming the organization for accepting a player like him. We had roughly a week to tryout new players, since Yashiro got a competetive ban. We took FUN k3y. I have contacted him since I knew him from BloodrainGaming and the German scene in general. But the team wasnt the same anymore. Sure we won our game against Actina Pact but scrims werent really good and the atmosphere in the team wasnt good either. We got stomped by devils1, defeated by Avez and stomped twice in a row by Illuminar. We ended the split in 5th place, which wasnt satisfying at all considering our performance with Yashiro. The blame is obviously not on FUN k3y, he performed well, even though he was new to the team. We had 1 week without scrims. I was relaxing and taking some time of League, preparing for the upcoming bootcamp in Warsaw.
A very new situation for me. I was very hyped to bootcamp with my team. The house was better than I have expected it and everyone was pretty chill and relaxed outside of the game. The scrims though were pretty bad, not gonna lie. We had 5 games almost everyday, sometimes 3 games and the last day before facing Illuminar free. We played against pretty good opponents most of the time and got smashed in almost everygame. This made me wonder how we would perform against Illuminar. Nervousness and feelings like this also played a role for some players. I myself have never played on a lan before, but surprisingly I wasnt nervous or anything like that. I was motivated and hyped to perform as good as I did in my first game against them.
Finally the day occured. Best of 5 against IlluminarGaming in the Polsat studio in Warsaw. The best and worst moment of the bootcamp. All in all I am not dissapointed in my performance. I had some good moments for example my Lee Sin in game 2 but I also had bad moments for example my Karthus in game 1 and me dying vs krugs as Jarvan IV in game 3 (XD). I dont want to write anything about drafts or the performance from my teammates. The only thing I can say that I didnt let my team down and I did everything possible to win the games. It was an amazing experience playing on stage and winning. It was also a sad experience losing 2:3 after being up 2:1 in a best of 5. A few days after the match against Illuminar I flew home to Germany. I streamed some soloq and went out with the team the few days where we didnt scrim.
I am amazed by the Ultraliga production. I only had experience in the German league. There is no media day, streams with 100 viewers instead of many thousand people watching on TV, Youtube or Twitch and no studio. I also got to know all the incredible and professional casters, which the Ultraliga has to offer. A big shoutout to TheFakeOne, Silvan, Azonh, Rajon, Magvayer and Avahir for doing an amazing job. Also a huge shoutout to the staff and the production in general.
I would like to thank the CEO of PRIDE Piotr for the opportunity given. Also thanks to Color and Mauro for contacting me, while I was LFT. It was a pleasure cooperating with all of you guys: Piotr, Color, Warszi, FUN k3y, Yashiro and xCharm. We might get in touch in future teams, I wouldnt mind that for sure.
I will post a LFT tweet in the near future. I hope I will be able to play on stage in the near future again and keep pursuing my passion of playing League of Legends.
Thanks everyone for reading and have a good day!