Origen BCN and BCN Squad - closing the last months from my personal perspective

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I have been thinking about sharing a few details about the last 2 months to give everyone who has been following me or the team a better insight about past events and how this impacted us as a team, me as an individual and the project as a whole.

I want to start this journey beginning on January 2020 a few days before I was supposed to move to Spain.
I couldn't be more happier at this point, we were getting closer with the team and I was getting ready to leave Germany for the entire 2020 year while signing with Origen BCN and be able to represent myself in LEC Academy.
Moreover I would be able to work alongside AoD and iHansen which would give me the chance to spend one year with them and work towards becoming LEC material as a player and as a professional.

While this was happening I was getting ready to leave Germany on a personal basis too.
I cancelled my contracts and my apartement, sold my furniture and was sleeping on the floor with a matress for the last few days knowning that they would be the last before reaching my destination in Spain.

But as you can probably guess it should not be my last few days here.
We were informed Origen BCN was disbanding and we were shocked.
The next days we spent hours and hours involing any resource we had to search for help and look for the best option for us as a team since neither the coaching staff nor the players knew what was going on.
What was great is that we stuck together as a team, we found a solution to play under the flag of sevenmila for the project BCN squad.

But the consequences sucked for all of us, for me personally this meant that I had to stay in Germany, all the effort of moving out was for nothing but now I would actually lose money.
Instead of being financially secured for one year I signed a 3 month contract.
We were not gonna work from a gaming house unlike any other team in SLO, I was not gonna be able to live, eat, work and learn in Spain with my team and the coaching staff.
We were not gonna be able to grow as a team and discuss issues in person.
I was not gonna be able to represent myself under the flag of Origen.
And finally: Instead of knowing my home for 2020 I knew my home for roughly 2 months.

We tried our best from there on to leave these events behind us.
Spending time in Spain at the media day was definetly the highlight and I will keep those moments close to me moving forward in life.
But I believe that this is where things started to move slowly in the wrong direction.
Our coaching staff had great plans, for us individually but also for us as a team.
After all they expected to be working with us for atleast a year and the plan was still to develop ourselves as a team and actually grow rather than chasing short sucess.
We found good results in scrims the week before SLO was gonna start, but looking back I can see our issues as a team being present even when we were winning and playing good.

But why did we suck so much?
Well that is a good question and there is definetly no short answer.
I personally believe that it was a combination of multiple points but mainly:
1) I think we had 7 different views on the game League of Legends in it's current state (two from the coaches and 5 from the players)
We tried to find a common ground in our play but instead we developed an ingame enviroment of every man for himself following his own little plan and his own little idea on the game.
2) While everyone was getting along fine and we talked about everything (actually we talked too much) we weren't able to discuss these issues in person and we didn't end up manifesting one common ground and idea based on which we could play and lead the game.
3) From my point of view we were more playing towards not losing than to win.
4) Mental blocks in terms of confidence, trust and past experiences resulted in us heavily underperforming individually and as a team.

I hope all of this gives some insight to my feeling process during this time but I want to end this journey on a positive note which is my biggest lesson I learned from AoD during this split:
You should try your best to find a lesson or something positive in every experience you go through in life.

And my lessons are the following:
I think a lot of people including myself are so consumed by League and working in a team during the split that they end up not having a life outside of League.
Spending time outside your job is a neccesity.
It creates a safe room in which you can reflect on things and a safety net you can fall back to in case things go wrong.
In my case I felt completely empty a few days ago, I was so consumed in the work with this team that I basically stopped doing anything else during my day than playing or working.
And I am not gonna let this happen again.

Esports in it's current state is so fast moving and short lived that there is absolutely no way you should ever expect financial or job security unless you are at the very top of things.
So for every players out there looking to fulfill their dream of playing in the LEC I want to advise you with this:
You're gonna eat a lot of shit on your way to the top and you got to be willing to take it and stand up again. And to stand up again not only do you need a strong will but also a security net to lift you up when you fall.

Which funny enough is my last lesson and exactly what I am gonna do in the next weeks.
If you read till this point I don't want you to leave this tweet and feel sorry for me or my situation.
I love this game, I love competing, I love esports and I honestly have no bad feeling for anyone since esports is a business and you should expect to hit the ground a few times during your career.
But if you feel a similar way then you should probably follow your heart and see where things take you.

So what's next?
For now I am gonna grind the ladder and work towards a healthy security net outside of League.
Thereby I will be able to attack any upcoming Spring/Summer Split opportunity with a fresh mind and hopefully a little more stability.

Thank you for reading and have a great day!

Tom „Rulfchen“ Ruckh

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