A Day in the Life: Dodo

I joined Team Liquid during the off-season in 2017. I became a free agent after Immortals did not make it into NA LCS franchising, and I still wanted to pursue my career in League of Legends. I was the General Manager for Immortals for 2 years, but I was also looking for a path towards coaching as well. Fortunately, I had a chance to talk to multiple teams and had many options to choose from. I decided to join Team Liquid after a long talk with Steve, and the organization’s philosophy fit what I was looking for, and the players and staff that I would be working with was a big plus as well. I joined the team on November 2017, and been having a great time since then.

Being a bilingual team is definitely harder than being a team with one language. There will always be a situation where there will be misinterpretation between players or coaches because of language barrier. It is sometimes very hard to translate the nuance within the message, and players often have arguments and misunderstandings because of the misinterpretation. But even though there are difficulties from language barriers, raw talent outweighs the struggles. That is the reason why almost every team has translators and gives English lessons to imports so they can break the language barrier as fast as they can.

If I had to choose one trait that helped the most of making the transition, it would be the experience of being a pro player. I definitely have easier time understanding what players need because I was a pro player, too. I understand their struggles, their desires, and their feelings. It was also easier for me to connect with the players because they knew and respected the fact that I was a pro player too. For the transition from being a manager to a coach, the fact that I worked with multiple coaches in the past and working next to them gave me a lot of insight of good and bad coaching. By working with multiple coaches and players, I learned how to structure effective practice and how to create a productive relationship between coaches and players. I also learned a lot of strategy and game knowledge from them as well.

I think it can definitely be beneficial for teams who can utilize a second coach really well. For us, Cain and I have been talking to each other a lot about how we can support each other on stage and how we can utilize our resources on stage. It is still a work in process, but personally I would like it to be a regular thing in the future.

I would describe my coaching style as strict and efficient. The one thing I always try to enforce during our practice is to be strict on rules. Making sure the players are on time, that they are focusing on League of Legends only during practice hours, making sure they condition themselves (sleep, diet, etc). I also try very hard to make sure the practices are productive and efficient, since most of the days are the same throughout the long season, I make sure the players feel like they are improving and learning something everyday.

I have been going to Korea every year for the past 4 years, and most of it was because of League of Legends. I do always enjoy going to Korea because I was born there and there are many things to enjoy in Korea, but most of the time we do have to just stay in our hotel rooms to practice. But traveling to Korea is always a enjoyable experience for me, whether it be for business or not.

They are all hard to deal with, they decrease my lifespan every day.

Olleh will probably die first, wandering around alone or eating something weird without asking. I can survive the longest, since I watched all the seasons of Man vs Wild. I’M READY.