Before becoming a world-class League of Legends (LoL) coach, Nelson Sng was working as an admin staff for the Singaporean esports team Absolute Legends.
Compensated with SGD$ 500 (USD$ 377.84) a month, and not yet versed in the intricacies of the game, the then 17-year-old student mainly focused on managing the team. Nonetheless, being paid to impact the game he loves was like a dream come true.
But the slightly over-zealous esports fanatic took the extra effort to share and highlight any pointers he had with the player – even if they didn’t quite ask for it. This was his first brush with coaching and he loved the idea.
“After what I’ve gone through, I wouldn’t even call what I did back then coaching,” Sng shared sheepishly. “It was amateurish and more of a passion project.”
The Singaporean may have started as a noob coach, but today he is the newest strategic coach of superpower European LoL team, G2; with the cumulative experience of coaching Chinese, Brazilian, Taiwanese and Singaporean teams behind him.
A tumultuous journey
Moving on from his short 2 months stint with Absolute Legends, he soon found himself as the team manager for Insidious Gaming Legends in 2013 for 2 years, before continuing his role as team manager in Vestigal for about a year starting in October 2015.
However, the big break for the amateur coach only came when Jordan “Grey ” Corby approached him to be the assistant coach and translator for HK Attitude (formally known as Hong Kong Esports). Balancing his new appointments and his duty as a mass communication and public relations student at Murdoch University was a struggle for Sng; however, it was also the push needed to accelerate his reputation and skills in the LoL coaching world.
“At the end of 2017 when my team HKA qualified for Worlds, I thought that maybe coaching would be a feasible option long term,” he shared. “I even paused my degree for my first foray into professional esports in Taiwan.”
The Taiwanese stint later led to two other coaching gigs: Brazilian team Vivo Keyd in 2018 and Chinese team LNG Esports in 2019.
Not all fun and games
There is no secret sauce to his success, said Sng. Just sheer hard work, lucky breaks and the presence of helping hands.
In particular, the mentorship of coaches Wong “Tabe” Pak Kan, Zhu “KenZhu” Kai, and Chou “Steak” Lu-Hsi were especially crucial in helping him develop his skills in drafting, managing players, and his understanding of the game as a whole.
“I am still in very close contact with all of them, and we still share ideas about the game,” added the grateful 27-year-old.
There is also plenty of toil. Sng’s typical day as a coach back in LNG Esports even saw him working 12-14 hours a day. To top it off, he gets little of the glory when his team wins but all of the brickbats when they lose.
For now, his journey as a coach has taken him all over the world and he hopes to use all of his accumulated experience to enrich G2 and give them the best chances of victory at the ongoing LoL European Championship 2021 summer split that starts today (June 11).
One area that the strategic coach hopes to work on is the implementation of a system to secure dragons. This addition may just be what the 2019 MSI Champions need to round out their edges and finally claim 1st place after their 3rd place performance in the recent spring split.
Said Sng: “The satisfaction of seeing the players you work with develop and win is enough.”
Catch G2 Esports in action tonight at 12am GMT+8 at https://www.twitch.tv/lec!
