By Jason Feng, Staff Writer
After an astounding career in ‘League of Legends’ in college, history teacher Mr. Lin steps up as the club sponsor for the ‘League of Legends’ club in hopes of transferring his passion to the younger generation.
Mr. Lin delved into the ‘League of Legends’ world at the start of 2011 in his college years when his friend introduced him to it. Following that, he started doing the classic thing of skipping class in order to play ‘League of Legends’ in his dorm room all day. He began playing casually but played more competitively, even reaching platinum, a fairly high rank in 2013, mainly playing a support role and thinking more strategically.
Despite not playing the game full-time due to his responsibilities as an adult, he still found time to play casually up until he was 24-25 when he quit the game fully, after getting indulged in another game called Final Fantasy XIV.
Becoming the club sponsor for the ‘League of Legends’ club wasn’t something that Mr. Lin planned for, but he embraced the challenge. Mr. Lin hopes to make sure that students are not only learning to play the game mechanically, but to have proper communication in a positive manner that isn’t just flaming each other as ‘League of Legends’ is known to be a very negative game. With this newfound role, Mr. Lin finds that ‘League of Legends’ never left him in the first place, and still holds a special place in his heart. Now he plans on passing on his passion and inspiration to his club members.
Although Mr. Lin enjoyed playing the game, there came a point where he enjoyed watching professional ‘League of Legends’ more than playing it.
“It’s more again like playing professional basketball versus watching the pros play. Like when you play, it’s fun. But there’s a certain amount of enjoyment that you will never see like on a pickup game that you see on professional TV. It’s cool to see the best players in the world do crazy things that you can never do.”
– Mr. Lin, History Teacher 2023
