FLY Thinkcard about Caedrel's hate-watch: "It does suck not having the love that we had in Spring and Winter because of something that the org did"

and converged on the same path: pushing their season to the 2026 World Championship. The hopeful teams last played in the last week of the 2026 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Summer Split regular season, but meeting in the playoffs was another level. Unfortunately, only one could reach the World’s qualifying series, and Shopify sent FlyQuest packing.

Though their LCS season ended in a 2-3 series heartbreak, FlyQuest qualified for the inaugural Demacia Cup Global Invitational. After their defeat to the Rebels, Sheep Esports had an exclusive interview with Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin. The Head Coach shared his thoughts on his team’s performance across the year, how enjoyable scrims were, and FlyQuest’s most recent drama.

Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin: “I mean, I’ve learned a few different things. You pretty much always learn things from different rosters you work with. This one was probably the greenest, newest roster I've worked with at the LCS. Even when I coached CLG, I still had older players in the jungle and support role when we did the all-Tier-2 roster in 2022. It was a very big challenge getting the team to see how I want to play the game and get on the same page about what I think is the best way to play League of Legends.

There were other good takeaways. I think that something very cool about this team is that sometimes, in reviews, when I’m focused on making the macro plan, sure we're standing in the right spot and all that stuff, a lot of them are bringing up pretty good points on when the enemy's out of position or what angles we can take. Obviously, it’s a double-edged sword, but it made me rethink the different angles that you can take.

Thinkcard: I mean, scrimming was always really fun. Honestly, I would joke around with my friends, and when I talked to my family that every day I came to the office, it felt like the players were having the time of their lives. They're literally having the best days of their lives every day. They’re experiencing LCS, playing the game they love, playing on a team, talking about what they can do better, and it really did feel fun to come into work, joke around, and problem-solve.

I would say practicing with this team would make me look forward to going into the office. On other teams, you could sometimes see when people were a little depressed or sad. Sometimes, if a day went poorly, people didn’t joke around, but pretty much every time between games, even if it didn’t go poorly, people would be sad. We would review, and the vibes would be down. As soon as we neared the next game’s draft, we started joking around again. It was definitely really fun.

Thinkcard: Honestly, we improved throughout the whole year, but I regret that we didn’t improve much. For example, in high-pressure situations, many players regress and revert to older habits. In this series specifically, we took fights we shouldn't have multiple times. We weren't patient; we weren't talking about what the enemy team was doing or could do, and we didn't problem-solve. To me, that usually happens when people aren't comfortable with the pressure, and the pressure makes them revert to old habits. It was a little disappointing to watch us make those mistakes when we've worked so hard in scrims and throughout the year to try to improve. This ended up being our downfall today.

Thinkcard: We made mistakes that we didn't make in Games 1 and 3. In Game 4, we died to ganks; we saw where they [SR] were. Even in Game 2, we knew where they were, and we still died multiple times. We didn't talk about what they could do, or we did but didn't problem-solve. Game 5 was similar to Split 1, where we were playing Shyvana, Orianna, or Camille. Those are all champions that don’t want to fight at top crab, especially when Shyvana isn’t level 6. We fought into Naafiri, Galio, Amumu, and Gnar, who were strong. It’s disappointing to see us go down this way after so much effort to improve this aspect.

Thinkcard: Yeah, you can draft Bard or Rell there. You could even do Leona, but we thought Rell would give us the most lane pressure and disrupt a lot of their follow-up engage. Rell would also be strong in most early skirmishes, which helps speed Shyvana up, and she locks people down when fighting. Bard can do that, but if he does, then you have to deal with everything happening on top of the Bard ult; in this case, it’s Galio standing there or Galio R. We could have gone to Bard, or we could have gone to Rell. The game was decided on top crab anyway, so we didn't even get to see how the game would have played out.

Thinkcard: We made the choice, right? We one-picked Orianna, and then we could either set a good position to carry by picking 2-3 a strong bot lane for (Fahad Abdulmalek) or 2-3 (Johnson Le) Shyvana. If we do the latter, we drop our botlane; Massu won’t have the greatest carry pick, but we should have a really good jungle matchup, which we like Shyvana against Naafiri. We chose Shyvana, which we're 4-0 on. If we're putting our power into Shyvana and then kill ourselves on top crab, the game will be hard. On the other hand, if that game Shyvana gets to level 6, the game's a lot closer. We also messed up the situation in toplane, so it's hard to say. Maybe it would have been easier to pick a stronger botlane that game and let Massu do his thing, but we made a choice as a team to do the other one, and that's how the game went.

Thinkcard: It's hard to make them feel fulfilled now. Once you get into the moment and play against the 4th and 5th seeds from other regions, the team will realize it’s a really good experience to play against some of these teams. They’re really good, and some of them were very close to making it to Worlds. Any LPL or Korean team close to making Worlds will be very strong. It’s going to be a really good experience. Some of our players don't have international experience either, so it’s cool to see how we’ll match up against these good teams, even practice against some of them, and see how we compare at the international stage.

Thinkcard: I wouldn't say it's that important. I would say that it's a good indicator of what we improved on throughout the year. Obviously, we're not very happy with what we showed today. If we show a higher level of play at the Demacia Cup, it would reassure the players and the coaching staff that we put in the work and improved. However, if we don't show that level, it shows we didn't grow as much as we wanted throughout the year, so it’ll show what type of work we put in. It's always good for players to experience the international stage, see how it feels when the whole world is watching you play versus one of these really good teams, and how you deal with that pressure.

Thinkcard: Yep, I think every player and coach, including me, needs to look at this tournament to show what they have, like you said: proving themselves. Obviously, this wasn’t the result we wanted this year, especially since we started pretty strong from winter to spring, but then this performance in summer- you don't want to see regression in performance- as we did. Everyone should approach this with the intention of, “I need to play well, I need to prove that I can be one of the best, I can compete with some of the best, and that I improved throughout the year,” because some of the mistakes we made today are not very good, honestly.

Thinkcard: Honestly, I don't think it affected our players too much. We kind of knew that that was a different part of the organization, and hopefully a lot of people watching our team still have nothing against our players and coaching staff. It is possible it affected us a little bit. Knowing that the biggest co-streamer is honestly completely hate-watching your games. Honestly, I don't think it affected us too much. It does suck not having the love that we had in Spring and Winter because of something that the org did. It seems very unfair to the players, especially for such a young team. It does suck that we are dealing with that, but I don't think it affected us too much.”