Rookie of the Week: Liquid's Dardoch

To say Liquid's had a roller coaster start to the season would be an understatement. It’s more like driving 100 mph down a highway at night on the wrong side of the road with no lights on.

Two members of their starting roster have been replaced by rookies from their Challenger team, Team Liquid Academy [TLA], and as of Week 2 in the 2016 Spring Split their record is 1-3. Times are tumultuous, but on Liquid’s wild ride a glimmer of brilliance has shone through.

Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett is our Rookie of the Week, stepping up to replace Christian “IWDominate” Rivera as Liquid’s starting jungler. Coming up from the Challenger Series and into the LCS would be daunting for most, but Dardoch has taken it in his stride. His eagerness to perform on the biggest stage is only matched by his self-confidence to deliver results. While it certainly feels like he arrived in the NA LCS overnight, the truth is his journey started a long time ago.

From a young age

It was always kind of inevitable that Dardoch was going to be a competitive person. Growing up he was incredibly into sports. He played football -- running back and wide receiver to get into the specifics -- and attributes his competitive attitude to his dad. “He brainwashed me to be a competitive person from birth. I was put into competitive sports from when I was about six or seven.”

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Dardoch lost interests in sports and went on to spend more time with his brother Devin, who at the time was trying to hit the professional Quake Live circuit. “He wasn’t professional but he tried to play seriously. He was like a tier below the professional tier.” Devin was instrumental in both getting Dardoch into gaming and his journey to the LCS. “He’s like one of the main reasons why I can even play competitively. He talked to my parents about it and convinced them to let me come out here.” It would have been a hell of a time to be a fly on the wall at the Hartnett household.

“It was just like, yeah, let him drop out of high school and get his GED and then move to California to play video games.”

His parents weren’t exactly thrilled at first, as you can imagine. Though things started to change when they looked over the contract. “We got the contract and they saw the money and were like, sure, go ahead. If you’re going to get paid that much then I guess it’s fine.”

Dardoch moved into the TLA house at the end of Summer and It was always known he would take over for IWDominate eventually. However, no one could have predicted just how soon that was going to happen. Even so, Dardoch wasn’t intimidated by the transition. He had been mentally preparing himself for stepping up to the LCS ever since he moved to California.

“It wasn’t a shock. I knew I was just as good if not better than every other LCS jungler. Just based on scrim results, with me and Matt TLA was one of the best teams in Challenger. Some thought we were the best, even LCS level. I was scrimming against LCS junglers the whole time and none of them were really smashing me.”

There must have been a few sighs of relief in Challenger when Dardoch moved up to the LCS. He’d already been putting on a bit of show and reking the competition. Against Team Frostbite he even managed to pull of something that is rarely seen at a competitive level, a Rek’Sai Pentakill.

“When that fight first started I honestly thought we were going to throw and lose because we have this notorious thing on TLA where we 50/50 Baron and trust me to land the smite. As soon as I got the smite I was like, ‘wait, these guys are three levels down they can’t kill me’ and I just killed them all. I E’d over the blue buff wall and Zig was like “No-no-no” but I was like, ‘I’m f*&king level 14, they can’t actually kill me.’”

The big leagues

Speaking with Dardoch he exudes confidence. When he tells you that he is just as good, if not better than the other LCS junglers, you can’t help but believe him. So when he talks about his aspirations for Liquid, and how they can be the best team in LCS if they fix their macro play and rotations problems, you believe him as well. The confidence is both refreshing and admirable for someone his age.

“Basically how I look it is this. If you don’t think you’re going to be the best you’re obviously not going to [be]. So I always have my mindset toward [how] I’m better than these players. If I’m not better, I can get better than them because I am really confident in my work ethic and I put in a lot of time. Since I moved in five months ago to the TLA house I put in 12-16 hours a day getting better and better. You can ask Dom, our first scrim block against [Liquid] main team five months ago we got completely slaughtered. Then, around the time I got promoted we were taking games off them pretty convincingly.”

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For inspiration Dardoch looks to Korea and the seemingly never ending supply of talented junglers the region produces. “I’m a really huge Korean jungler fanboy. Reignover and Rush are my two favorite players in NA. All my rune pages at LCS are all named after Korean junglers.” While he has already scrimmed against Reignover a lot, Dardoch hasn’t had a chance to play against Rush. When we asked him about it, he brimmed with excitement.

“Yeah, I really want to play against C9. [laughs] I want to smash them. Summoning Insight came out like a week ago and Monte said ‘When was the last time a player came out of NA and they were really world class?’ Then he brought me up and said ‘You have a pretty promising player in Dardoch but is he going to be world class? Probably not’ and I just really wanted to shove it in his face.”

Wouldn’t that be something to see?

However this Split plays out, I think Dardoch will be around for a long, long time. And if our next generation of North American rookies are anything like him, the future of the NA LCS is in good hands.

Be sure to check him out at lolesports.com this weekend, in Week 3 of the 2016 Spring Split, as Liquid take on NRG eSports and Team Impulse. Also hit him up on his Twitter or drop into his stream.