The nightmarish run at the 2023 LCS Summer Split for FlyQuest continued on Wednesday evening after their plans to arrest the situation by subbing VicLa for Spirax backfired with a loss to NRG Esports.
FlyQuest had aspirations for the championship in the second half of the season after their coming so close to securing a place in the international place in Spring. That run gave a belief of a possible championship win, but that belief has been fading thanks to a 3-9 start to the split.
This forced the team to substitute VicLa for Spirax in the mid lane; despite VicLa being one of their biggest offseason acquisitions, Spirax himself is a Challenger-level player, and the expectation was that that substitute happening ahead of the second-to-last week of the split would yield a positive result.
However, the reverse was the case, and it took one game to return Spirax back to the bench and VicLa back to the starting lineup for Thursday’s (yesterday’s) game against joint top side Evil Geniuses.
Meanwhile, FlyQuest announced that the move to reverse their decision was pre-planned regardless of Tuesday’s outcome. According to them, Spirax was given the NRG game as a trial, and the trial period wouldn’t end with Wednesday’s loss.
However, with five more games left for FlyQuest, VicLa may remain in the starting lineup for all of them. They just avoid losses in all five games if they want to stand a chance at making the postseason.
One of the hopes is the fact that the Summer Split playoffs have a playoff bracket that features eight teams which is easier to make compared to the Spring Split’s bracket of six.
Despite that reality, the team is in ninth in the league due to their 3-10 record, one place away from a spot in the postseason bracket, and four of their remaining five regular season games come against teams ranked in the top five in the standings.
Daniel Ademiju Idowu
