SEN Goldenglue: "The problem is when you hit your expectations so quick you have to keep replacing them"

Competition can sometimes resemble a seesaw: one day you’re at the top, and sometimes you’re at the bottom. The return to the 2026 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Spring Split has been turbulent for . The Society started with back-to-back defeats and saw their match against as an opportunity to set their season back on track.

After a competitive back-and-forth, Sentinels emerged with their first victory of the season, spearheaded by a strong performance from their jungler . In a post-match interview with Sheep Esports, Sentinels’ Head Coach Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer shared how the team adapts their preparation for the two ongoing competitions, compares rivals and themselves as Trading Card Game decks, and launches a new rivalry with former colleagues: the Former 100 Thieves Derby.

Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer: “I wish this were the case that, when we go into these longer series, we keep improving and improving. Typically, we play the first game extremely clean, and then we lose a little bit of our power when going into the second game. Today’s series followed this path after our clean first game, but we couldn’t stop their snowball composition in Game 2. It’s massive that we were able to pull our first victory of the Spring Split, plus it’s our second victory in a row after our midweek victory at the Esports World Cup (EWC) Online Qualifiers. We’re starting to build momentum as a team in the split.

Goldenglue: Beating a team that’s growing in strength like FlyQuest is really big for us. We’re contending for the same spot, the middle team that’s trying to break in and solidify its spot as a top team. I think everything is close, even if is still the best team, it’s not by much. would follow, and then it’s a toss-up between Team Liquid, FlyQuest, and us. It’s a very competitive split right now, and I think that’s why winning against teams that are similar to us is a really big growth in experience for us.

Goldenglue: Each team has a unique champion they play. LYON likes to play Vayne top, and they can play every jungler in the game. For us, HamBak has been insane on Skarner. While other teams have tried to copy it, he has the secret sauce that makes him so good at the character. He knows the champion’s interactions better than other people, and he can execute on it. I feel like drafting is mostly a matter of preference. This means your drafts should change depending on the opponent you’re facing. I think a lot of the overpowered champions are tradeable. I compare the opponent’s comfort to ours, and then I work to find a situation where we get to select our comfort while they get none.

Goldenglue: Yeah, I’ve been in the league for a long time. This has to be the only time I’ve ever seen mid-week competition during LCS weekend. It’s more challenging to bring 100% to both events, but we still treat it super seriously, like any other important match. There’s some level of it being remote that feels slightly different from playing on stage, probably because some players perform differently when playing remotely. It’s harder to prepare because we have to prepare for two teams this week. We spent around two days preparing for our midweek EWC game and two days on our LCS match today. It’s more rigorous to operate, but it’s fine. I wouldn’t want to do this permanently, but as a temporary thing, I think it’s interesting to see how the teams deal with the situation. What I told the players today was that everyone had a weird week. I’ve been working on the LCS for a long time, and this is definitely a weird week. Whoever deals with that lack of… I would say it’s less preparation for the match this week because we only had two days to prepare. So, whoever deals with their low energy after playing two sets of best-of-threes, and some teams even played more because they lost in the First Round and had to play again. The teams that deal with that stress, or maybe low energy, are the ones that will do well this weekend.

Goldenglue: Interesting. Right now, the way I feel about Disguised is that maybe they’re a tempo-based deck in terms of the year. Because at the start of the year, Sentinels would be that mid-range value kind of deck, that’s what I’m going to go for right now. Yeah, I wish I could play at the Atlanta Regional this next weekend. Sentinels, please let me be our Riftbound player. Give me a week off. That’s how I would value both teams as decks.

Goldenglue: Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s not necessarily like, “I’m going to shit [sic] on you guys,” but I love competing against people I’ve worked with. I’m super excited to compete against LYON and , against Team Liquid, my former Assistant Coach Spookz and , and against and . I think that is always exciting for me, and those are the matches I’m looking forward to. That’s what I’m pumped up for, it’s like the breakout matches. Those are fun.

Goldenglue: We've got to take them down. Right now, Dhokla is on top; he won the last split, but we’re coming for him.

Goldenglue: Going into the year, we would have seen it as a win if we attended an international with such a new roster. The problem is that when you hit your expectations so quickly, you have to keep replacing them. I really want to hit Worlds or MSI/EWC and attend a bigger one. We didn’t go to a big, proper international like First Stand; we went to the Americas, which was still cool. I guess going to a proper international is still my goal. I think it’s a difficult thing to do, as all the teams are so close right now, and to grow the roster to be a team that can compete to be in that position is what our goal for the year is. Right now, I think we’re on track. That’s where I am based on expectations. I definitely think we can make EWC/Worlds.”