LYON Srtty: "League has become a lot harder to carry individually. It’s become a lot more teamplay reliant, and I think that’s frustrated a lot of people"

Sheep Esports’ exclusive interview with LYON Srtty following his elimination in the LTA Playoffs.

LYON Srtty on LTA North Stage

“The relationships on LYON were fantastic, and I really love everybody on this team.”

Of all the players in the LTA North, Jett Michael “Srtty” Joye’s year has perhaps been the most chaotic. The toplaner entered the league after a very impressive 2024, dominating both the Tier 2 scene and the soloqueue ladder. Given Srtty's stacking up of both championship titles and record-breaking LP numbers, fan hype was through the roof for his debut. But in 2025, Srtty's rookie year started by joining Dignitas, a team where living up to said hype seemed nigh-impossible. After two brief splits, Dignitas announced that Srtty was already off the team, and it seemed that the prospect would spend Split 3 on the bench.

But, as another LTAN team, LYON, found Visa issues with the rookie toplaner of their own, Srtty suddenly had another shot at the league, mid-way through the third split, as a substitute. Though LYON showed promise with Srtty, the team ultimately fell in the playoffs to 100 Thieves, losing 3-1 in a hard-fought best-of-five. Once the series was over, Srtty spoke with Sheep Esports in an exclusive interview, where he took a deep dive into the environment of both teams, the challenges LYON faced in the 100T series, and more.

In Game 1, despite a back-and-forth early-mid-game, where LYON often had the lead, 100 Thieves were eventually able to stage a comeback and win in 40 minutes. What went wrong in this kind of drawn-out game state?

Jett Michael “Srtty” Joye: “I think what happened inside of this game was an issue with our teamfighting. I don’t know if we weren’t taking it seriously enough, but after we killed them on mid, Xin Zhao’s chasing Rumble, and Alistar’s going to krugs, we really should take Baron. If we got Baron in that spot, we would’ve won the game, but we ended up losing Baron after that. And that’s where the game really swung. I'm not exactly sure what the issue is, exactly, but I say it’s teamfighting related.

You locked in Camille in Game 4, the first Camille in the LTA North this year. Can you give some context to the pick and why it didn't work out?

Srtty: So, there are a few things that Camille offers in that draft. The first one is, it gets prio into K’Sante 1v1, and outscales very hard in sidelane. It also has lockdown for the Ziggs, and it's a champion that's capable of matching Yone, so that Azir can match K’Sante. There aren't many toplaners in the game who can actually match Yone and hold their ground, because of the amount of sustain he has. Like, if I were to lock a tank, for example, I wouldn’t be able to, but Camille allows us to do that. So, the idea was, the Camille matchup versus K’sante is losing for Camille, but I thought that I’d play the lane better, so I would go even. And then, we could match Azir into K’Sante after first item, and I would hold my ground versus Yone, and Azir could make progress that way.

Now that LYON is eliminated from the LTA, how do you plan on spending the offseason?

Srtty: I don’t really take breaks. I’m not a big fan of it. I’ll probably be streaming, playing soloqueue, going for Rank 1, all of that jazz. You know, the usual. I don’t think I’ll be taking too much time off.

Speaking of Rank 1, you reached 2227 LP in soloqueue last year, the highest LP ever reached. Having climbed that far, what can you say about the state of NA soloqueue?

Srtty: This year it’s way better, at least for a toplaner. There are some games that will be complete trash, but if you’re queuing up after scrims on a weekday, like let’s say 6 p.m. onwards, half of the time, I’m playing versus another LTA toplaner. I’m versus Gakgos (Ibrahim Bulut), I’m versus Dhokla (Niship Doshi), I’m versus Thanatos (Park Seung-gyu), Bwipo (Gabriël Rau). It’s always somebody, normally. So I think that, at the very high echelons of Challenger, the game quality is actually quite good, even though the queue times can be pretty long. Because there’ll always be like three or four LTA players in each game. But, below that, I’d say League has become a lot harder to carry individually. It’s become a lot more teamplay reliant, and I think that’s frustrated a lot of people. So, I think it’s harder to get to the point where the game quality is pretty good, but when you get high enough in Challenger, it’s pretty good.

When Dignitas got eliminated the other day, you tweeted out, “Guess I wasn’t the problem.” On DIG, what was the problem?

Srtty: I don’t want to name names specifically. But the environment on DIG was really bad. Like, for example, one time after scrims, everybody was really depressed, and I was trying to be happy, and I legit got told, “Why are you happy?” And then, I just stopped trying to be happy, because I was like, “Okay, I mean, like, my bad.” But the environment was terrible, to the point where I had to go to the gym on my own to get them to organize things for us to do outside of the game, because we wouldn’t talk to each other outside of scrims. Everybody was always depressed, the environment was very harsh, and nobody was resting enough. Everybody’s mood was terrible. Like, even when we’d win scrims, we’d be miserable. That’s how focused we were on the mistakes. And, being focused on the mistakes is great. But there’s a point where it becomes toxic, and I think that’s what Photon (Kyeong Gyu-tae) was touching on. I think that the coaches should’ve handled the environment much better, but they didn’t. That was the biggest problem. I also think that, maybe, management could’ve been more hands-on. Like, I feel if the team is doing this bad, I shouldn’t have to go to management and say, “Hey, can we do an escape room or something, because everyone is miserable, and we’ve gone 0-18 in scrims in the last four days. So we need something to change, you know?”

Your time on LYON, from joining the team to today's elimination, was only 23 days. How have you handled the hectic and fast-paced environment of LoL esports?

Srtty: I mean, it kind of just “is what it is” sometimes, you know? Like, I was honestly happy when I got out of the DIG environment, even though I wanted to keep playing. I said to my manager, “If nothing changes, I'm not going to play better in Split 3. I will not be able to play in this environment.” Then, yeah, he decided to let me go, instead of changing other things inside of the team that I was asking him to fix. Which is fine, it’s totally chill. But, I think for me, I always try and have a plan, and always try to keep looking forward. I have backup plans in case things fall through, because I know that esports is very fickle, and nothing is guaranteed. So, I think I always try and create a bit of a safety for myself, so that I’m okay.

Last year you won both the NACL on FlyQuest Challengers and Collegiate LoL on St. Louis. Having played in both developmental NA leagues, how would you compare the two?

Srtty: NACL is a much better path to pro, unless you’re on Maryville. CLOL is a bit of a joke. Below the top eight teams, they’re Masters, not even full Challenger. I’d say, outside of Maryville, it really is just terrible for the most part. I think that you should do both at the same time, because I think that you should get your schooling paid for, while also competing in the NACL, in case NACL doesn’t work out. And that way, you haven’t sacrificed your future. That’s what I did. I think that’s the best path to pro, because you learn certain life lessons by being in school and college, all of that jazz, and then at the same time, you still can be dedicating a lot of time playing in a high-level environment inside of NACL, and improving with people who are usually worth their salt. I’d say, in collegiate, a lot of staff members inside of teams aren’t really qualified to be in the positions they are. And that can be detrimental to players, so having the perspective of what isn’t necessarily a professional league anymore, in Tier 2 NA, but is something similar, is nice.

On LYON, your teammates included two players fluent in Spanish, and two fluent in Korean. Having joined late into the year, on a roster with such varied backgrounds, how would you describe the team’s communication?

Srtty: I think it wasn’t that bad. At least, when I joined, we used simpler English to communicate. Everyone communicates in English. We don’t normally have an issue in scrims communicating. Like, maybe sometimes, I remember one time I was like, “Lyonz, (Pedro Luis Peralta) can you go zone the Jarvan?” and he was like “What is ‘zone’?” and I was like, “Oh. I should use a different word next time.” But, other than really small things like that, the relationships on LYON were fantastic, and I really love everybody on this team, and I think we communicated well with each other in and out of game."

Header Photo Credit: Stefan Wisnoski/ Riot Games