This season hasn’t gone quite as Winterfox planned. The former Evil Geniuses team adopted new branding this offseason and along with it new hopes that their League of Legends year would go differently than a mediocre 2014.
With young up-and-coming stars Eugene “Pobelter” Park and Johnny “Altec” Ru at their two carry positions, the future looked bright.
But a 5-7 start to the League Championship Series (LCS) has left the team and its players searching for answers, including Ru, who requested a move to the support position. The team has acquiesced to his desire, leading to one of the most bizarre midseason roster moves in recent memory as Winterfox coach Choi “Paragon” Hyun-il will now man the marksman role for the team. Winterfox outlined the move in a post on Facebook, noting that support player Jang “Imagine” Hyeonsu will move to a substitute position.
Choi started for Incredible Miracle during the 2012 season of League and played for that team’s second squad last year, so he has high level experience playing marksman, and playing it well. But moving Ru, one of the team’s young stars expected to serve as a backbone of the team to a different position, doesn’t seem like the move you want to make to salvage a season.
Ru himself said that playing a carry position was “stressing me out” because at times he wasn’t being “productive.” Moving to support, he says, will allow him to be more “vocal.” Of course, in a team with three native Korean speakers and a fourth fluent in Korean, making Ru’s English communication more critical might be a poor decision. But only time will tell.
For now, though, it looks like an inexplicable change for a team that’s already falling towards the bottom of the LCS standings, save for the fact that the player requested it himself. It’s one that’s left the community in shock.
