SKA Yushia after LGC Stage 3: "Women not playing games is a thing of the past"

After a difficult start to the season, has slowly but surely been climbing the ranks in recent weeks. A team that was initially counted out of the top four stunned viewers during the League of Legends Game Changers: Rising Stage 3 after defeating Eterna and punching their ticket to their first stage finals. Nevertheless, the squad fell at the final hurdle, but now enters the Equal Esports Cup playoffs with renewed hope and determination.

Ahead of the team’s next matches, jungler Iulia "Yushia" Boldor sat down with Sheep Esports to discuss her team’s current form, her relationship with gaming, the perception of women in esports, and her ambitions for the future.

Iulia "Yushia" Boldor: “We are pretty lucky to have the players that we have on this team and this environment. Everyone is really respectful during conversations, and that's why we can have healthy debates, improve, understand what goes wrong, and understand what everyone needs. We will keep getting better and better, something that showed in our recent results.

Yushia: Yes, we kind of had a more in-depth talk where we agreed that we should just be honest with each other, especially during drafts. We talked about what we actually don't like and what we're more comfortable playing. I think that really helped.

Another thing was having goals. Every single one of us now has goals in scrims, and we have more structure. Before that, we kind of just talked about everything, so we weren't getting consistent results because of that. Having clear goals and understanding whether we worked on them or not definitely helped.

Yushia: Well, the goals are about map movement. So it's macro stuff in-game. I'm not sure how much I can share about it, but it's just how we move around the map.

Yushia: It’s important, but it's also not about being disrespectful to someone or telling them, "Okay, you did this bad, you did this wrong." We are not really pointing fingers, but we know that if we want to give feedback to someone, that person will take it with good intentions.

In the past, there were some discussions where people would not feel that comfortable receiving this feedback. But now we understand each other. We know everyone wants the same thing. Everyone wants to win and improve. So every feedback is given, we take it nicely, and it definitely helps.

Giving and receiving feedback can be hard for a lot of people. Even if you are a good player and understand that feedback is important, it can still be hard to receive it, especially from others. So I'm really happy we’ve worked that out. And it's not just the coaches giving feedback. We can actually have discussions.

Yushia: Yeah, I really believe that these last few matches helped us realize that the discussions we had and the things we worked on are actually going somewhere. We are not stuck.

It definitely made us feel like we can do much better, and I'm confident going into the EEC playoffs. It'll definitely be harder since we are starting from the lower bracket, but I'm really happy with what we showed as a team.

We are scaling.

Yushia: It comes down to how I started playing League of Legends. I was a basketball player at first and played it for about seven years. I was really good at basketball. I would play in competitions, so I was in a team and everything. Since it was a mixed environment, I often had injuries while playing, and there was one injury that was pretty bad. So there came a moment when I just couldn't play anymore.

After I recovered from my arm injury, I kind of lost my flow and the progress that I had made over all those years. It was rather demoralizing, and I had to take a step back from my passion. It was then that I discovered LoL with friends on my PC. I always loved this competitive environment. I felt like it was something I would love to pursue as much as I could, and however long was possible.

I quickly came to the realization that maybe having a career in League of Legends wouldn’t be so bad. I developed a passion for it after that — I loved the game, the competition, the team play, everything. It was what motivated me to keep doing my best and trying as hard as I could to become the best at that game.

Yushia: Right now, since my whole occupation is League of Legends and being part of SK, it's like a full-time job. Even though I have other activities and habits throughout the day to maintain a healthy lifestyle, League of Legends is like a full-time job.

Yushia: Yes, definitely. [Laughs] I never imagined that I would get there. I loved the idea that maybe it could happen, but I never thought I would actually happen. The younger version of me would be so, so, so happy seeing me today.

Yushia: I don't really like to think about what I would do in the future. I would love to do this for as long as I can. For now, I'm thinking about what I can do right now and what I can achieve with this roster. So definitely, my goal is to improve as much as I can. With improvement, the results will also come.

Everyone wants to win, so I don’t really focus on that. I truly believe that if I'm doing my best, then I won't have to worry about winning because it will happen regardless. It will show in our results.

Yushia: I think it's mostly about people having a generalized idea about what a woman in gaming means. They have this idea of women being bad at games, or just not playing at all. It's something that's stuck in people's minds just because there isn't much representation, and it was always men playing games.

People are just not well-informed. They are not educated on this. I truly believe that with more representation, people will realize that girls can be good as well — they already are. I understand where these misconceptions are coming from, but women not playing games is a thing of the past.

Yushia: From my side, I mainly worry about the girls on my team, more than I worry about myself. I'm not really affected by what people who don't know me have to say, but I would be affected if those around me suffered because of it.

People who have no clue who I am, what I do, or have never talked with me saying stuff on the internet — I really couldn't care less. I’ve had this attitude throughout my whole career, or even my whole life as a woman. I couldn’t care less about them. I just want to be the best support to the people on my team.

Yushia: [Laughs] Yes, I did. That's hilarious because I was talking with someone about the buffs earlier. I'm really scared about them. I'm not really fond of B1’ing Maokai. (First picking Maokai on Blue Side)

Yushia: Enjoying is a big word.

When I first started playing competitively as a jungler, my most-played champions were Maokai and Jarvan IV. So let's say he's an old friend. I don't mind playing him. It brings back good memories.

Yushia: I hope they only experience happiness in their life, and every word they send makes me extremely happy.”