TSM rounded out its Academy League of Legends roster today by signing former Full Spectrum and Western University jungler, Winston Herold. He’ll be taking the vacated spot of Mingyi “Spica” Lu, who’s been promoted to TSM’s starting roster for the 2020 LCS Summer Split.
With this move, Winston will be making his first appearance as a part of an LCS organization. Previously, the young jungler spent some time on Full Spectrum, a North American amateur team that played in various lower-tier tournaments like the Upsurge Premier League.
He also played for Western University’s collegiate team since September 2017, where he was known as Julius. He helped the team win the 2019 College East Conference Playoffs and pushed the roster to a second-place finish at the CLOL 2019 Championship.
TSM’s previous Academy jungler, Spica, was brought up to the starting LCS roster after Dardoch left to join Team Dignitas this offseason. His departure was highlighted by a major scandal involving the team’s president, Leena Xu, who accidentally leaked that “no one wanted to pick him up” during one of Doublelift’s streams.
Dardoch will now join a team featuring veteran talent like Aphromoo and Froggen, as well as a young, hungry ADC in Johnsun. The only hole that Dignitas management needs to fill is the top lane since the team said it’d allow former star Huni to explore other opportunities in April.
While Dardoch didn’t have the greatest split, he was a reliable jungle so it’s surprising that TSM decided to replace him just after one split. It’s surprising TSM keeps replacing their members after just one split. With this progress it’s unlikely we will get to see TSM participate at international tournaments since other teams keep their members and develop them instead of throwing them out after one split. It’s interesting to see how will TSM fare after all this drama in LCS’s Summer Split, considering the hatred from the community. With the split a month away from now, we might get to see the kitchen of other teams as well so stay tuned for more information in the next days.
The jungle position has been a point of contention throughout TSM’s history. Spica will technically be the team’s fifth jungler in the last four years. He last got a shot at the LCS when he was brought up during the 2019 Summer Split playoffs.
The 2020 LCS Summer Split kicked off on June 12 and will continue all Summer.
