"We're only at 20% of our potential," MRS Miella following Game Changers Stage 1 win

The first stage of the 2026 League of Legends Game Changers: Rising season has crowned its champions. Mental Rush stormed through the competition and outpaced G2 Hel in the grand final to claim the year's first title. With four more stages still to be played before the playoffs, the race is far from over. According to Mia "Miella" Steger, who spoke to Sheep Esports following the victory, the gap between teams is smaller than ever and the title remains anyone’s game.

In this exclusive interview, the German AD Carry reflects on winning her first title since 2024, her ambitions for the 2026 season, and the challenge of maintaining momentum throughout a competition spread across several months. She also shares her thoughts on the importance of supporting others amid growing harassment campaigns targeting members of the scene on social media.

Mia "Miella" Steger: “[Laughs] It was really important for me. Obviously, I can't really grasp the victory yet, right? We still have a long way to go. It's still the first stage. For me, it's just nice to know that we are capable of being the best. Last year with SKA, I was questioning if I had what it took to win at all due to our results.

But now, having the confirmation that my performance can change the outcome gives me the biggest motivation boost ever. I just know that everything that I've been doing so far is worth it, and I will keep on grinding.

This is just the start for me, and I will not be satisfied until I make it to the LoL Game Changers finals and take the trophy home with me.

Miella: Yeah, 2025 taught me that I needed to be more humble. I questioned myself a lot because, I knew I had what it takes to be the best ADC of the scene by far, but I clearly was not. I couldn’t win last year, and many ranked me below the others in my position. At some point, I was telling myself that maybe they were right. Going from winning everything to this really messed up my confidence.

Today, I think I can confidently say that I’m the best AD Carry in the women’s scene again. I still have a long way to go, though. I do not want to be stuck in this scene. My aspirations are to make it to the Prime League or LFL first divisions, and maybe, as I said in my last Sheep Esports interview, someday even the LEC. For that, I need to be more humble.

I need to improve on everything I can. As long as I’m not Challenger—as I’m not getting offers from all the teams, I will not be satisfied with myself. I will keep pushing forward.

Miella: Two things. The first is in-game related, and the second one is out-of-game related.

Outside of the game, I worked a lot on efficiency. I’ve been looking at how to improve my habits and all that stuff for a while now.

In the last few months, I’ve been playing about one solo queue game a day, with the purpose of turning every notes I took into presentations to maximize learnings. I’ve been taking notes since around 2022, and I think I just finished my 75th presentation by aggregating them into something I can use to better myself.

This is one of the main leeway I use to improve my habits and help me focus on finding the right aspects to work on. This is especially important in a competition in which I’m at the top individually. I can’t wait for others to step up and beat me. I have to improve on my own if I want to stay at the top—and that’s what I’m doing.

Honestly, I’m really surprised that we won Stage 1 despite me not playing much League of Legends lately—I expect that will change soon.

Inside of the game though, I’ve also been working on consistency. Big shoutout to our head coach Unkraut (Tim Blume), but also Emtest (Adam Emtestam) who ended up leaving us for G2 Hel… Grr! Today was payback for that [laughs]!

My mid-to-late game got ten times better. I work way better around not dropping waves, and my early game, especially in the first few levels, is way more consistent than it used to be. Back in the 2025 Nova Series finals, I got really humbled by Caltys (Maya Henckel) and Colomblbl (Ève Monvoisin) in lane.

I still have a lot to do, but I’m so locked in. I’m so hyped for what’s to come, I swear to God.

Miella: Definitely. There’s also a huge difference between the environment I have this year in Mental Rush versus the one in SK Avarosa last year. I think SK last year had different goals than I did. In my eyes, I wanted to win everything, but I think they had other ideas.

Going into 2026, I told myself that I needed a project which would trust me and acknowledge what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. I got our coach Unkraut on board, and I told him that if he gave me the space I needed to grow, I would be the best in my role by far—and that’s what he’s doing.

I couldn’t wish for any better people supporting me. I’m really happy we were able to achieve results immediately as well.

Obviously also, being in the women’s and non-binary scene helps me a lot and makes me feel comfortable. I had a lot of experiences in the mixed scene where I got discriminated, hated for who I am, so having my girlies with me and Mental Rush appreciating me the way I am—that just helps me be the best player I can be and go 1v9 for them. This is my gift to them.

Miella: If I’m being honest, I’d say we are only at about 20% of our potential as a team. We are genuinely really bad right now. I’m being fully serious when I say that. We won Stage 1 and beat Vitality, but we honestly were lucky. We are really far from our peak.

We won because we played around mitigating our weaknesses well—we were terrible at team fighting. That’s why we lost two games in the Swiss stage against G2 and Vitality. That’ll be our focus ahead of the next stage. If it takes eight months of practicing team fighting, we’ll do it. Hopefully we’ll be able to remain the best, you know?

The one thing that could screw us and our momentum over is our confidence. Next time we face Vitality, I want us to have that confidence and know that we can and will 100% beat them. For that, we need to get a lot of preparation in and come into officials with full confidence.

We saw it in game three against G2 in the finals—if you don’t know what to do around teamfights and objectives, they will exploit those weaknesses and beat you. Until we fix that, I can’t be sure that we are the best and that we’ll be able to stay at the top.

Miella: I’m scared of every team. I’m going to be real with you, everyone has a lot of potential. Two years ago, I felt that if we didn’t troll we could win everything, but it’s not the case this time.

You know, I’m friends with everyone on Vitality, but we kind of beat them up this time around, and I know they will not take this lightly. Rym (Rym Salloum) and Owpi (Mimi Effraimidi), they are the kind of players who will take those setbacks and turn them into motivation. I’m scared—really scared.

If we don’t keep improving, they will beat us.

Looking at G2 Hel, it comes down to Izzeri (Isabella) and Lumi (Gina Kircher) fixing their early games. They can be on the same level if their bot lane improves. Right now, their strength is teamfighting. Caltys and Shiina (Marta Mesas Garrido)… they’ve been insane at that. Against them, we had to specifically plan around avoiding teamfights simply because they are so good at them.

Looking outside of them, SK also has some potential. I know they can be good, but we haven’t played them yet or seen much. We’ll have to wait and see, but I know they can be interesting.

Eterna is a bit similar. I believe they will be a completely different team heading into the next stage, considering they weren’t playing with their starting midlaner Sashy (Sasha Barrault) this time. We have to respect them.

You also obviously have the underdogs after that: Eclipse, Barcząca Esports, Blue Otters… I think that the overall level went up, even if the top level may have gone down a bit. I don’t think we are on the same level as a peak G2 Hel from 2025, for example. We need to stay humble and keep on gapping our opponents.

Miella: I’m sorry in advance for the words I will use but, fuck the haters. Genuinely, fuck every single one of them. We all obviously support everyone in SK. I’ve seen some cisgender women being transvestigated in the last few weeks, and it genuinely baffles me. Just the concept in itself is crazy to me. At the end of the day, all of these haters on social media, they do not matter to any of us in the scene.

I am not afraid to say it, I am a trans woman, and I’ve never been supported more than here. There have been so many cisgender girls who have supported not only me but all of the trans women who have also contributed to making this scene a better place: not only players, but even coaches, managers, or the trans women who help organize these events. I have never once met a cisgender girl who wished to get rid of trans people in the scene.

I still see people saying that trans women have an unfair advantage, yet Caltys, for example, is still by far the best player in the entire scene?

People will hate us and advocate for trans women to be excluded, but at the end of the day, these people are just bigots. The scene needs to hold together and support one another. I know for a fact that all my cis girlies are glad that we are here. I know that they are really happy playing with me and laugh their asses off every time I crack a 67.

What I ask is that everyone who actually cares about the scene go out and support the people being harassed. I have received so much hate over the years, but one single positive message outweighs 1,000 death threats. Go support Wolfie (Lily Kraft)—everyone from SK. They deserve it, and they certainly do not deserve the harassment they get. I’m glad to have them all in our scene. Huge shoutout as well to Apollonia (Dafni Gkerveni), my teammate of last year and still one of my best friends.

Haters will keep on hating, but we have to push through, united, so we can make the world a better place. I will not stay silent.”