Treyven “Lethamyr” Robitaille is a 23 year-old professional Rocket League Player for Ghost. He is a long time video gamer and competitor, including playing League of Legends and CS:GO competitively and even becoming the Ontario, Canadian, and North American Champion in Highland Dancing. After that, Treyven earned a degree in Electrical Engineering and worked with an Engineering firm for six months while rising into pro-level Rocket League play. Prior to RLCS Season 4, he became the captain of the North American team, Ghost.

Ghost recently just missed out on going to the world championship LAN in Las Vegas. We got a chance to speak with him and ask a few questions to get to know him, learn more about his history with Rocket League, and find out what he’ll be doing in the off-season, which includes helping Flipside Tactics prepare for the Season 6 World Championship.

He told us that prior to his career in Rocket League he was focused mostly on improving in CS:GO until he grew tired of the game in early 2016 and decided to try out something else on the recommendation of a friend.

So you reached the rank of Global Elite in CS:GO and decided that the game was too saturated. After switching to Rocket League with the goal of being competitive from the start, when was the moment where you realized, "Yep, this is happening"?

Lethamyr: So the friend that introduced me to the game in November—when I finally said I’ll get the game, he said, sweet I’ll jump on the game too. We played doubles together for a while and we got to silver in the first three weeks, and I started playing on my own and surpassed him way too fast by accident. I had one night where I just grinded the game and I got to gold in the first month of playing—that was when the season used to be just bronze, silver, gold, and then platinum for the top 100.

I think within 100 or 200 hours, I realized I was progressing a lot faster than other people. I was actually watching Loomin, the esports guy for Epic Games now. He was the first streamer that I met and he said he’d been playing the game for months beforehand and I ended up playing him in a match and I’m like, Holy crap. I’m playing someone who’s been playing this for three or four months and I’ve only played for a month. I noticed that I might be improving faster than other people and that’s when I started to really grind the game.

I want to do a word association game to kind of get more into your personality versus your history. So, just respond with your first reaction. If you want to do one word that’s fine and if you want to do an essay that’s fine too.

The first one is Fans.

Lethamyr: Their support is amazing, like on all my YouTube videos and all that stuff and when I’m streaming they’re all cheering for me and everything like that.

Okay the second one is Critics.

Lethamyr: Unaware of background information—as far as RLCS goes—where they can’t know what the communication was in a certain situation. So, a certain player on a team is called out for a mistake but it’s really just two players maybe calling for the ball and they both just drive off in different directions because they both thought that each other were going to go for it, for example. Stuff like that.

In Season 2, you were playing for a team called Vendetta. In the second week, you were moved to a sub position and you subsequently left the team. Do you think that affected your drive?

Lethamyr: I would say that I was obviously unhappy with the decision they made given the results were actually pretty good. We beat Selfless in the lower bracket and then we also beat Deception in a game 5. I think it was almost a reverse sweep. We came back and got a win. And then we lost to Genesis, which was Pluto, Klassux, and Espeon at the time, I believe. So we were one and one in the first week and that’s the only week that I played in regionals. After that they swapped over to Karma I think, because Matt wasn’t playing much. But I would say that after they switched the roster up, I became way more motivated to prove everyone wrong as far as what I can do as a player. So I spent that entire off-season during the league play watching it closely seeing how everyone was doing and how to improve to be one of those players. And I think that’s when I ended up returning to CorruptedG to join into a team and we ended up getting to LAN that next season. So obviously it did do something.

That’s actually part of my next question. In Season 3, you made it to LAN as Denial Esports. You lost to G2 0-3 in league play, and then you go into the regionals as the 6 seed. You are to date the only 6 seed to ever beat a 3 seed in NA or EU.

Lethamyr: Yeah, I believe so actually. That top match has always been a blowout except for that one time.

Can you talk about what was going on with the team heading into that match and how you prepared for it?

Lethamyr: I think what the 6th seed sometimes forgets—or maybe they forget. I obviously don’t know what’s in the mentality of a 6 seed team other than when we’re the team there—you’ve got nothing to lose. You’ve had a way worse season than the 3rd seed and I feel like you can use it to your advantage that there’s more pressure on them riding on the fact that they’re 3rd seed and they should definitely win this. So if they don’t, it looks really bad on them.

So, we had nothing to lose. We were like, let’s play fast. Let’s do whatever we can. And we ended up pushing them into a loss there for I think it was Game 7. All I know is that it was a really good series. I think we played the best we played the entire season at that time. It was kind of weird because, like I said with the whole pressure thing, I felt like us coming into league play that season, we had a lot of pressure to perform and do well which may have caused us not to perform as well. You know what I mean? I think the pressure in Rocket League is a huge thing. People don’t realize that. You know in ranked there’s no pressure you can do whatever you want, but the second there’s something riding on your shoulders, it definitely changes how you approach the game, how you approach every option, every decision that you make. That pressure rides on you and it’s really interesting how it mentally affects you.

When I play ranked, and I play with the same two guys every week, I want to win so badly. I’m disappointed every time there’s a loss. I don’t know if I would call it pressure, but I really want to perform. But when you’re talking about a salary is on the line, I imagine it’s a hundred times worse.

Lethamyr: Oh, for sure. That’s the thing though, there is pressure in ranked if you pressure yourself and that’s what all pros do. There’s that subsequent pressure of I want to perform well, I want to always improve, and I want to be mechanically sound. You’ve already got the pressure on your own self, but now you’ve got all these other people expecting you to do something and that’s when that breaks down. Because you’ve got so many fans watching you, so many staff members of your org watching you, you’ve even got casters and what they would say about you if you made a mistake in certain situations. There’s so many things that ride on top of you. You’re like, I could ruin my career with one stupid miss or a backflip or something like that.

Moving on to RLCS Season 6. Every series you played except for the last one went to 5 games. Can you talk about how the close matches, wins and losses, affect the team, the morale and how you address that?

Lethamyr: Sure. The first week where we lost two Game 5s and we were disappointed. Every time, you’re disappointed. There’s no hiding that. We were okay with it. Being 0-2 in the first week, really, we’ve got lots of time. Moving into the next week, when we could have gone 0-4, that was a lot of pressure. We got one win off of Rogue that week, which really helped us mentally. I feel like going down 0-4, that’s really rough two weeks in. You’re basically guaranteeing yourself bottom 3 at that point. Getting a win was definitely a huge confidence booster.

Moving into the next weeks where we lost to G2, we definitely felt like the biggest problem with us as a team was closing out a series… as evidence can show. I think that just has to do with confidence in our abilities to beat these other teams that are world class when it matters.

We’ve said a lot that when we get Zane to play very fast and be confident with his attacks and his abilities, we perform really well as a team and we feel like we can easily be a top 3 team in North America if we do that. But when you have that pressure on you, it can affect all three of us mentally and it only takes one gear out of the three gears to have a bit of a mess up and it progresses down the line.

I’m sure a five game loss is super draining. Is a close five game win also draining or is it energizing?

Lethamyr: I would say it’s both. I remember the one time where we 3-0’d CLG in Season 4. That itself was still draining, but it was also energizing. It doesn’t matter what number of game it goes to, your mind is so focused on the day, that you’re already revving to go three hours before the match starts. Your mind is on full, 100% capacity for the next like four hours of your day. RLCS days are the most draining days I’ve ever experienced in my life, I would say. Just more than anything else, like even highland dancing or something that is actually physical effort. I feel like my whole body just feels way more drained after RLCS days. Doesn’t matter if it’s one series or two series, because your mind stays at 100 until you’re done. It doesn’t really matter how long it takes. So I would say it’s energizing and draining.

There has been some speculation on RLesports subreddit and elsewhere that Ghost may see some changes. Can you give us any information as to your mindset and how you’re approaching the off season?

Lethamyr: All I can say at this point is that me and my team will be doing whatever we can to the best of our ability to improve our chances at having a better result in the next season. I won’t allude to what that means. You’ll have to leave it to your imagination. But we will be working hard to make sure we have better chances and improved results in league play and onwards.

Well you know in NA, the past two seasons, the top four has been the same. So we’re looking forward for some change here. We’re looking for some excitement.

Lethamyr: I think people forget that consistency is really good for storylines as well because when you have this consistency and it all of a sudden breaks, that’s really exciting. I’m looking forward to proving everyone wrong next season.

So you announced that you’ll be helping Flipside Tactics going into the World Championship LAN. Can you talk about your relationship with the team members and how this arrangement was set up?

Lethamyr: I haven’t had too many opportunities to help them out because of our schedules, but we are trying to work some things in. But the way that it came about is that Kuxir actually personally asked me to do this for the team. That probably stems back from when I first really got to talk to him in Scotland during the League of Rockets, Twelve Titans Season 2.

We had a real long conversation. I don’t remember exactly how it started. I think we sat next to each other’s computers in the area. We just got to talking and we really dove into how each of us see the game and we realized we both have a really unique way of viewing the field and all of the players and stuff like that. And we kind of understood each other on a level that I didn’t think anyone else did in Rocket League. So then we got a pretty good relationship going from that. We ended up playing some games there in threes and we really gelled as a team, just messing around in ranked. I haven’t really talked to him much since then, but he just randomly messaged me and said, hey I really like how you see the game and I’d really like you to come in and back things up that we think are going wrong. So I’ll basically verify what’s going wrong and try to bring in some new tools that they can use to improve as a team moving into the World Championships.

Can you expand on what you’ll be doing? Will it be just going through replays?

Lethamyr: So far what I've done is sit in on scrims with communication. In between goals and games, we talk about strategies that would change how it’s going, or why it’s working—not just saying, "Keep doing what you’re doing," we’re really diving into what reasons they won the games that they did and trying to reinforce good habits and eliminate bad habits. I also do replay analysis where we use Discord Gameshare and then I’ll have the game replays on my computer while everyone else watches and they can feel free to input whenever they want to. It’s just a basic group of 4 people trying to perfect a team.

It’s just free of charge, I’m just trying to be helpful for some friends.

Chrome announced that he helped NRG going into the regional playoffs. I’m not sure if he’s going to continue going into LAN, but it makes sense considering the playoffs went well for them. You and him are the first time that I’ve heard of other players doing this. Do you think this will become more common? Or is it already more common than fans realize?

Lethamyr: You have the same information as me. I don’t think I’ve heard of any other pros that have done this in the past. I know there’s a lot of grand champ rocket league players that have been helping teams, but no one that has a fan base. There are many amateur level pros just below Rank X that have really dove into the coaching side, but yeah Chrome and I have definitely been the first to step out of the pro group and help out another team. I don’t really know anyone else.

Will you be attending the LAN?

Lethamyr: I wanted to attend, but I don’t think I will be going unfortunately. I wanted to go and wanted to show my face on the desk for Ghost, but unfortunately, I had other plans that overlapped.

Last 1uestion. If you wanted to say thank you to anyone right now for anything, who would it be and why?

Lethamyr: I’d say thank you to my girlfriend, my manager, my coach, my team, my fans, my YouTube supporters, my discord members. They’ve all been motivating me to be a better person and better player. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I appreciate every moment of support.

If you want to keep up with Lethamyr you can follow him on the below platforms. I especially recommend following his YouTube channel. His videos feature a self-aware style of commentary and explanations of decisions that combine for invaluable insight for players looking to improve.

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