Coach check in: Hemal "Hemal" Salvi

LoL coach discusses beginning of season, team future

BEN NGUYEN Managing Editor

Today on Coach Check-in, I sat down with head League of Legends coach Hemal “Hemal” Salvi to discuss the beginning of the team’s season and its future.

I cast y’alls game the other day, and I saw that you were in the midlane. How did that happen?

So in the tournament we’re in, basically our midlaner GoodSir was out of town for a business trip. And so I was in as the substitute midlaner.

And how do you think that went?

It was okay. I think I had some fun, despite the loss. Still got one win. You saw that ryze triple kill in the base? That was pretty fun.

That was entertaining for sure. But with the full starting roster, how are you feeling about the team this year and how far you guys are going to go?

Currently I’d say we’re still making a lot of fundamental mistakes. We’re still gelling as a roster. We’re making our final roster decisions right now actually, and I’m hoping that once we have everything set and prepared going into the rest of this semester and next semester, we’ll be able to start improving at a pretty fast pace and reach the level we want to be at, which is having solid fundamentals, having your players in good spots in their lanes and every matchup and just overall being a well-polished team.

Do you think you’ve already seen some kind of play style emerge for the team or are you trying to be fairly flexible with your champion pools and how you play?

Right now? We’re a little experimental with the team. There definitely are some trends though. We usually have our jungler Ryan on an enabling pick. We usually have him as the focus for early games and are playing through or with him, and we usually have Jraff on a scaling carry champion to serve as a late-game carry.