By James “Torok” Thomsen
Coming off the back of a strong 4th place finish in the NLC Spring, this is the story of how we challenged the very best and finished just short of another EU Masters run.
Following the Spring season, our League of Legends team had one task ahead of them and that was to reach EU Masters. With a narrow loss to Nordavind (Now 00nation) in the previous splits playoffs, the team knew that a top 2 finish was in reach for the following season.
Whilst BTXL seemed incredibly strong finishing finalist in the Spring EU Masters and Fnatic Rising remained a tough academy side – the NLC seemed more competitive than ever before. Riddle, Nordavind, Tricked, Galaxy Racer and ourselves had either kept the same roster or improved upon their previous iteration – all sensing a weakness in the current academy sides.
The split began as expected, with the favourites collecting wins across the board. Fnatic and XL topping their groups and the usual NLC format unfolding. However, as the split continued some notable abnormalities occurred. BTXL began to faulter, dropping games to Riddle, Team Singularity, Resolve, Granit and many others. This led to a slew of changes with Dan and Denyk being dropped by XL’s struggling LEC team and Markoon and Advienne progressing to the main team. Whilst this steadied the XL ship, it certainly reduced the championship winning team just one split earlier to a new roster needing development.
Simultaneously, Riddle became the first team to defeat both academy organisation in the regular season and races opened up in both Group A and Group B for 1st place. Team Singularity, Tricked and XL battled for the #1 spot in Group A, whilst Riddle and Fnatic jousted to the very end in Group B.
This led to a final playoff bracket forming where Tricked and Fnatic met in the upper bracket and a lower bracket brawl between BTXL, Riddle, Nordavind and Team Singularity was to take place.
Naturally, the initial match for our League side against Nordavind became a grudge match from the previous split’s failure in the playoffs and both sides were keen to prove they had improved more over the second leg. In a crushing 3rd game performance, Team Singularity showed to have the edge in their solo lanes with WeiZoR and Furuy both popping off on Fiora & Akali respectively – champions the team would fall back on throughout the playoffs run.
On the other side of the bracket, Riddle defeated a weakened XL and came into the SNG match as the spectators’ favourites. Showcasing some incredible team work and aggression over the NLC group stage, the recent academy slayers played tooth and nail for a spot in the lower bracket final. The 3rd game once again, (lead by Fiora and Akali) came down to the wire, but in a dramatic base race Riddle failed to destroy the nexus and gave Singularity the necessary time to recover and steal away the game. The clutch factor of our League of Legends team was here to stay.
Finally, the series versus Fnatic Rising. The series for EU Masters.
Starting out strong Team Singularity quickly progressed the series to a 2-0 against Fnatic off the back of some excellent team play and Noltey’s trundle mechanics. However, with Trundle being taken off the table for the rest of the series Fnatic managed to level to 2-2. The trusty poke comp failed in game 3 for SNG and the creative Mordekaiser jungle into Sejuani just barely missed the mark. Everything came down to game 5 and as always, our squad fell back to the comfort Akali/Fiora solo lanes and aimed to skill check Fnatic Rising. However, unlike previous series SNG fell behind early and struggled to make their way back in. Whilst skirmish potential still existed it became too difficult and Fnatic completed the reverse sweep to end Team Singularity’s summer run for EUM.
Whilst the season itself was certainly an improvement on the Spring before, to fall short at the final hurdle was painful for our roster of players and staff.
“I’m super proud on how the team performed throughout the season, and even though we ended up tripping over our own feet on the finish line in the plyoffs, and getting reverse swept by Fnatic and not qualifying for EUM, then I don’t think we could have done more ahead of that match and were essentially just finessed by the better team on the day.”
Atle S. Stehouwer, Founder & CEO, Team Singularity
Tune in later this week to get to know more about our plans for 2022!
#SNGARMY
About Team Singularity:
Team Singularity, recently acquired by Rightbridge Ventures, launched in 2016 as a grassroots operation and has grown into a premier esports organization with professional teams competing in Fortnite, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League, League of Legends, FIFA22, Apex Legends and more.
The company is focused on talent development and is the leading player talent incubator in esports. Team Singularity has the largest path2pro esports academy in the world with over 10,000 active amateur players making their way to become the next pro player in esports.
Team Singularity is home to more than 100 players and staff members from more than 30 different countries.
About GamerTech™:
GamerTech (GT) brings disruptive products, technology-based gamer wearables, and advanced apparel solutions to market, focused explicitly on gamers and esports athletes to boost performance, amplify experience, and enhance their overall wellness. GT is a startup within MAS Innovation, a subsidiary of MAS Holdings - the most prominent apparel tech manufacturer in South Asia, with over 118,000 employees across 17 countries and a turnover of USD 2 billion, strongly focusing on apparel-based innovations. MAS Innovation ranked 18th among the world's best workplaces for innovators, conducted by Fast Company in 2022, and placed in Clarivate's highly prestigious Asian innovators list in 2021 and 2022.
