Rookie of the Week: NRG Esports' Moon
The door has been left wide open for a new generation of NA junglers to step out onto the stage.
One such jungler is NRG Esports' Galen "Moon" Holgate. This weekend represents the middle of the 2016 Spring Split, and with NRG vying with CLG, TSM, and C9 for second place, we caught up with Moon to talk about making the transition from Challenger to LCS as well as how to bounce back from a tough loss.
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To infinity and beyond
Moon’s journey to the LCS started with Team Imagine, a Challenger Series squad that narrowly missed out on promotion to the NA LCS last year. Even though they missed out, Moon’s performance on the team was impressive enough that owner Gerard Kelly signed him for his next venture -- NRG Esports. When he joined the roster Moon had high expectations for himself and the rest of the team. The transition from Challenger didn’t daunt him in the slightest.
“It’s pretty similar. Everyone’s better and the competition is more fierce, but other than that it’s the same scrim schedule and the same schedule in general. You wake up, you play, you scrim, you play Solo Queue. The only thing that I’ve noticed that’s really different is that LCS goes by a lot faster compared to Challenger. Challenger is a super long grind. LCS goes by super fast.”
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Time certainly is flying, particularly when you consider that half the Split is already gone and teams only have so much time to distinguish themselves and jostle for Playoffs positioning. For a while, NRG looked to be one of the front runners in the competition, but with the rise of Immortals and a devastating loss against Cloud9 over the weekend, their road has become rocky.
The ability to bounce back from a loss is something that separates the great teams from the good teams. Moon thinks it’s well within their capability.
“After Sunday we all relaxed. Today is our off day, though we’re going to watch the game as a team in a couple of hours. Pretty much it’s about knowing that you lost, learning from that and forgetting about it. Don’t think about it anymore. Focus on the next week.”
The great escape
As to how they go about finding these moments of relaxation, Moon and the rest of the team are fans of escape rooms. Particularly Chang-suk “GBM” Lee, who apparently brings them up almost everyday.
“Everyday, GBM is like ‘Hey, you want to go escape room?’ It’s like where you go to a room and they trap you in and you have an hour to get out. GBM is completely obsessed with them. Everyday he’s like ‘Hey, come, we go escape room.’ Just yesterday we did two of them. We got out of one and the second one we didn’t quite get out of. It’s good team bonding.”
If you speak to anyone in competitive sport, they’ll most likely tell you that a team is only as strong as the bonds that tie the players together. Whatever they’re doing at NRG, it seems to be working, as Moon had nothing but praise for the rest of his team -- particularly Eon-young “Impact” Jeong, who he considers one of the best people he’s worked with. “I think he’s almost a perfect teammate, because he’s really smart and really good. If you make a mistake he doesn’t blame you. His criticism is really constructive.”
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Time will tell if these bonds manage to hold together and NRG can stay at the top end of the table. Moon’s aspirations are high, but he has the confidence to back them up. “I want to go to Vegas and do well at the Playoffs. For the rest of the year, even though it sounds kinda boring, I want to make it to Worlds and experience it.” As to whether they’re on track, Moon responded with a resounding “Definitely.”
Check out Moon this weekend on lolesports.com as NRG take on reigning NA LCS champions CLG and a struggling Echo Fox. They have an opportunity to solidify their 2nd place position with a win over CLG and beating Echo Fox would just be icing on the cake. Don't forget to hit Moon up on his Twitter.
