Team Solo Mid are about to enter their third World Championships with a different jungler. When Amazing decided to return to Europe, Reginald could have picked almost anyone. Que Santorin
Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen’s history isn’t quite as long as his name. He started off his professional League of Legends career on a team called “Intellectual Property” about halfway through season three, where he played, left, joined another team and soon returned near to the end of the season.
It’s here that he played his first big tournament: 2013 Dreamhack Winter, where he and his Danish team which included now also worlds bound Origen ADC: Niels, finished in third place falling short of SK Gaming and KMT, the squad that would go on to become Team Roccat. This was when he first started to be noticed.
Towards the start of Season 4 Santorin left Intellectual Property to join: The Fox Sound, where he went on to win a few minor tournaments and could have had an opportunity to gain points towards the Season 4 LCS Summer promotion tournament. However The Fox Sound fell short against Steve Bakes Cookies, former team of Roccat Toplaner Steve and H2k support KaSing.
Santorin followed the team as they joined TNP Gaming, only to quickly leave again and continue his nomadic tour of teams.
His next destination was Cloud 9 Eclipse, the team that became the now also worlds bound H2k. He went on to place second with them in the Copenhagen Games and was asked to play with the team in their LCS promotion game against SHC, giving Santorin the shot he missed in spring. However, despite the hype, the team infamously “choked on LAN” and after a 3-0 defeat, the opportunity slipped away.
Santorin however wasn’t a quitting man, not too long after the failed qualification with C9E, Santorin crossed the Atlantic to join Team Coast. After a now very familiar performance of winning minor tournaments and getting a shot at LCS promotion, Team Coast were 3-0’d by Evil Geniuses partly due to the highly unpopular choice of replacing their solo laners last minute with random challenger Koreans.
The story was getting too repetitive, things weren’t looking to change, but all Santorin’s resiliency eventually paid off after he left Team Coast.
Santorin didn’t choose the baylife, the baylife chose him.
Santorin’s TSM career didn’t have the brightest of starts, his first event with the team: IEM San Jose, ended in a very shocking defeat to the newly promoted EU team: Unicorns of Love. The critics were rough and TSM fans were divided in panic and faith. Santorin however continued to keep the same level head he had traversed the professional scene with and soon helped TSM lead the 2015 Spring NA LCS split, earning them an invite to the IEM World championships.
This would go on to be TSM and Santorin’s biggest victory as they went almost undefeated to win the event with a clean 3-0 in the finals against World Elite, who had come off the back of their own personal miracle knocking out the then considered “best team in the world” GE Tigers.
The momentum from being considered the best team in the west died awfully short however at the Mid-Season Invitational. Santorin and Dyrus in particular came under heavy fire after team embarrassingly crashed out with a 1-5 record. Still the Dane persevered.
Come the summer split and TSM qualified for worlds despite a shaky regular season finish off the championship points from last split and making it to the finals. Said finals saw another historical moment for TSM, but unfortunately another one not in their favour as they were swept 3-0 by CLG.
However, despite all the bumps in the road for Santorin and Team Solo Mid, they’ve earned their spot on the grandest stage of professional League of Legends.
Santorin has seen failure, but he’s never been a failure. He now has the opportunity to show the world who he is and what he stands for.
Images courtesy of Riot Games Flickr Page
This article is part of the #Worldsper10 series previewing players attending worlds 2015, find the others here:
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