Many of us solo queue players who have been playing the game for a while have spent more than our fair share of time observing the professional landscape trying to gather any bits of information we can to improve at the game we love. Sometimes when we stumble onto the pro LoL scene, we can’t help but wonder what that competitive environment is really like and dream of getting first hand experience.

That’s why we sat down with Dignitas Head Coach Ilias ‘Enatron’ Theodorou to discuss what it’s really like to coach League of Legends professionally!

How did you get into coaching in the first place?

Enatron: Well that's a long story. I have been playing the game since closed Alpha. So, I have been a part of the game for all its existence, pretty much. I was playing a lot of the game back in Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, and I was playing over 1000 games per year.

But then, unfortunately, I had to stop. I had to say that I can't make it this big like other players, my level wasn’t quite high enough back then. There was no massive difference, but it was Diamond I or something when the only thing above it was Challenger. After many conversations, it was clear that mechanics was why I could not go pro; it was not the brain. So, why not use that brain to help others that have the mechanics become better?

So, this is how I eventually entered the scene. As a coach, to begin with, in my first year, I wasn’t anything close to being good. I was just telling them where they made the mistake and that the players would take it over. Back then, I would be in charge more about coordinating the team and how they want to be drafting. I would say back in the day, in Season 4/Season 5 when I started coaching, coaching was something between managing the players and making drafts.

It kind of eventually, of course, became this role. It expanded further throughout the years of my coaching and now we're at the point where I'm in charge of many different things that are sometimes even unrelated to the game. For example, I'm in charge of their weekly schedule. I'm in charge of the relationships between the players, whether there is a problem to deal with that needs to be discussed about performance situations or be discussed about even problems that they might have in their personal life. I'm close to 30, so I'm there also not only to help them maintain, but also to help them outside of the game and manage to keep the squad coordinated and motivated.

How do you strike a balance between guiding your players inside and outside of the game and giving them the autonomy to make their own decisions?

Enatron: As a coach, I'm trying to create consistency when it comes to the team culture that we're building. Throughout these two years we have had consistency when it came down to how we want our team atmosphere to look. We would prioritize in some cases that the group should feel good together rather than being called in to check in, check out as coworkers.

We were trying to establish the concept of brotherhood over the concept of just play the game and go home. Because once you have that, then whoever is joining the team or even with a new coach or a new player, they will already feel that the rest are there and he has to just become part of the machine.

So this is the first thing that we are aiming for, at least for the culture within the team. I have plenty of talks with the management in order to create team activities, team dinners, exercises within the gaming house [that] we do quite often. We did this a bit more with the Academy boys in Spring Split where we were sitting and playing a lot of board games together. You know it would help promote more team spirit, and then they would have a pretty cool time enjoying each other's company. So, that’s the most important thing in terms of our philosophy and sometimes that involves them making their own decisions, but at least giving them options that fit the team philosophy.

Professional players often have strong individual opinions. How do you manage differences in playstyle and preferences within the team while maintaining a cohesive overall strategy?

Enatron: Overall, the relationship that the coaches have with our players is a give and take. We're trading information with each other. We are having arguments and brainstorming together, and this is where we are going in the direction of how we are going to be as a team in terms of strategy.

When it comes down to inside the game, the coaching staff see the strengths and weaknesses of our group and let the team know. We are having meetings and determining what is the best way to win games. When Svenskeren and I hear this, we are making sure that what is being discussed in these conversations is being pursued and finding ways to take these focus points and make their ideas greater than they already are. We have experienced players with great habits and combine them with ours, using different perspectives, and make sure everyone gets what they want and ultimately finding a common conclusion of how we want to work as a team under our org’s philosophy.

In the midst of a long and demanding season, how do you help your players avoid burnout and stay motivated to continuously improve?

Enatron: In the Spring Split, with two games per week, it was easy to monitor and we weren’t really having it other than our players just being down because of our losing streak. What we would do is sit down with our players and discuss ideas, what our official games are, play some solo queue and hold one-on-one meetings with players. We did this instead of four days of scrims, one of them would be this building day to start the week and determine what we want to practice with the remainder of the week.

In the Summer Split, this was much harder, as every week was basically Super Week. We were basically having those meetings briefly in the mornings each day and I don’t think we really experienced any burnout during the split. There were some instances towards the playoffs where we booked extra night blocks, and you could see the players start to fade towards the end of the day. This is not too normal for the western culture to have this many games and even for myself I could see the difference.

Once we felt more comfortable with our play, we would reduce the scheduled extra scrims to focus on the other aspects of life to ensure the right balance with sleep and preventing burnout and things like that. It’s really important not to overwork playing this game and to remember that when they get home they will still go and play solo queue.

How do you facilitate constructive communication between players during post-game reviews and analysis sessions?

Enatron: Between the Bo5 games, we're not focusing on too many things that went wrong during the game. We’re just pointing out some things that went bad and not putting too much attention onto the problems because we don’t want the players to feel like they are bad and kill their confidence.

Usually, what I like to do during the split, I’ll say it at the time it needs to be said. Any emotions should be released out there and once we leave the room, there’s nothing left to look back at and we are moving onto the next day. We might discuss more about what went wrong, but we remove all the tension and negative feelings right away so it’s not left weighing on them when waiting to discuss more in the future.

I’m really proud of the players and how they have handled this. They have never had an issue of any harsh criticism or statements ever crossing into personal relationships. In the esports circle, there are so many things related to your mental state and so it’s important that any criticism whether it’s good or bad is not used emotionally and instead considered with what can be taken from the information to improve, and that’s it.

I think this was really great about our team in general, that every time there would be like an emotional conversation or harsh feedback, that all the players would think why somebody would say that and they wouldn't think, ‘Oh, this guy just has a personal problem with me.’

League of Legends is a game of high-pressure situations. How do you prepare your players mentally and emotionally to perform at their best during important matches?

Enatron: I had four out of five players that were really experienced in these situations. So, I won't say that I was ever having doubts about them being emotional or not. I knew that every time, we can be emotional after one game, but when the draft starts for the next game, these guys are true professionals and they're going to focus on what’s in front of them.

I had my questions when it came down towards Tomo because he was the rookie, right? At least, it was his first stage playoffs, so it was really important for me that we discuss with him, specifically what he’s comfortable on, and allow him to play those things. We would still push him to play more things outside of his comfort zone.,but I think he really delivered on that. As for the rest of the players, we would discuss during the practices, the situations where we might give up too easily during the game for example, but instead use it as a high pressure scenario where they weren’t allowed to just give up because it was a scrim, and to replicate more what they would experience on stage. This forces them to approach the situation differently and address other factors like why he looked tilted in the game, or what happened in that game and how much did you grow from it.

I think even when we were down 2-0 versus Golden Guardians, the conversation will start like, ‘they're not doing anything special, we are losing it. We need to play it better. So, every time there was no conversation like: ‘Oh, how did we lose this fight’ or ‘we lost because we played bad.’ We will still discuss it, but we tried not to overthink. And I think this was the biggest success for me, at least as a coach during the playoffs.

We’d like to thank Enatron for taking the time to sit down with us for this interview! If you’ve still got any more burning questions about the professional landscape and coaching in this type of environment, check out Enatron’s socials and ask him for more of his thoughts!

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