VIT Coach Garih: "We thought we could win the LEC"

One of the biggest disappointments of the 2026 LEC Spring Playoffs, the Hive saw its run come to an abrupt end in the second split of the year, finishing 0–6 with no nexus taken. Despite carrying strong momentum into playoffs after topping the regular season standings, were met with a swift reality check following defeats to Movistar KOI and GIANTX.

Amid rumors of a difficult environment and strained scrim culture, assistant coach Mauro Garih sat down with Sheep Esports to reflect on the difficult end to the split, as well as the lessons learned and the path forward.

Mauro Garih: “I’m a positional coach for Jungle and Support on Team Vitality's LEC team. I’m mainly responsible for our vision systems, especially during the mid-game, so I work closely with the entire team in that area.

However, around 70% of my focus is on , helping him improve his individual performance, mechanics, teamfighting, champion pool, and map openings. In short, I’m responsible for supporting his development as a player while also helping build a deeper understanding of our vision systems.

Garih: We went from being super motivated and genuinely believing we could win the LEC to getting a reality check against . After that terrible loss, the atmosphere just wasn’t the same. It really threw a wrench into the team’s momentum. We weren’t able to bounce back from that loss, even though we’d been on a great run throughout the split.

Garih: Player performance can fluctuate a lot depending on many different factors. Obviously, we were a much stronger team during the regular season than what we showed in the playoffs.

As coaches, our job is to make sure that the things we do well during the regular season carry over into the games that matter most, and this time we weren’t able to do that consistently. We need to learn how and why that happened. That’s our focus right now and what we’ll be working on over the next two months.

So far, our playoff performances have been disappointing. We need to improve across the board: drafting, gameplay, and preparation. Everyone, coaches and players alike, needs to step up.

Garih: It's a team that genuinely enjoys working together, but like any competitive team, the players have high expectations of each other. When a player feels they're performing better than the rest of the team, it's natural for them to feel frustrated. That's not something unique to us. It happens in every team at every level of competition. I don't think the fact that the players get along well means they'll stop being competitive or ignore what happened. Everyone is aware that some players didn't perform at the same level they showed during the regular season, and that's something we have to address honestly if we want to improve.

Garih: One of our main goals is to improve our resilience in high-pressure moments. Arvindir (Danusch Fischer) and I actually went through something similar on BDS Academy. After losing to , we realized that the team struggled to bounce back from setbacks, so one of our biggest focuses going into Summer was building mental resilience and making sure the players could perform under pressure. That work paid off and helped us a lot during the LFL Summer Split and EMEA Masters. I'd like to replicate some of the things that worked back then, but every roster is different. The players are different, the dynamics are different, so we'll need to adapt the process to fit this team rather than simply copy what we did before.

Garih: After the split, both Pad and Danusch spent a lot of time reviewing what went wrong and where we could have improved as a team.

Pad tends to take a great deal of responsibility for the team's challenges. One of his strongest qualities is his ability to quickly identify underlying issues, although he often feels he could have contributed to resolving them faster. That mindset reflects a strong sense of accountability and a genuine commitment to continuous improvement, which is essential when working in high-pressure competitive environments.

At the same time, the coaching staff can’t fix all the issues. Sometimes circumstances are outside of your control, and success comes from adapting and making the best possible decisions with the resources available. Sometimes you go on stage with what you have, and that’s it.

As for Danusch, his role is often misunderstood by the community, which is understandable given that much of his work happens behind the scenes. His primary responsibility lies in the drafting process, where he brings a very specific area of expertise. Like anyone in a leadership position, he makes mistakes from time to time, but over the past three years he has consistently played a crucial role in the success of the teams I have been part of.

I have a great deal of trust in his understanding of drafts and strategic preparation. If everything were on the line and I needed someone to deliver the best possible draft, he would unquestionably be one of the first people I would turn to.

Garih: Yeah, outside of coaching in the LEC I also do content on the side, TikTok, YouTube, Patreon, that kind of stuff. It’s honestly pretty exhausting to balance both at the same time [laughs].

A lot of the tools I’ve built came from things I wished existed when I was trying to improve myself or when working with players. Most of them are just small problems I kept running into over and over, so I ended up trying to fix them in a simple way.

For example, LoL Cooldown is about making cooldown tracking more intuitive, especially when runes or game state change how abilities actually work in practice. Things like understanding how long a Nocturne ultimate really is with different setups, or getting used to those timings during lane.

ProStreamers came from the frustration of how scattered pro VODs are. It’s basically just a faster way to find and watch what high-level players are doing across different regions.

And ToolMap is more of a “why isn’t this already in the game” idea, a single place where useful map-related information and tools are just easier to access while learning.

There are a few other small things too, but overall it’s just been a side project space for me to build things I think would’ve helped me or my players earlier. Seeing other people actually use them has been the most rewarding part.”