After a year away from competitive play, Lee “Rush” Yoon-jae has signed with KT Rolster.
A fan favorite during his time in North America, Rush gained his Western popularity in 2015 and 2016 during his time on the now defunct Team Impulse and Cloud9. Rush’s overly aggressive carry jungler playstyle mesmerized fans eyes, while Rush’s streams captured their hearts.
But due to Riot Games’ change to its interregional movement policy in 2016, which extended the residency process for imported players to four years from the original two, as well as internal issues within the team, and Rush’s future on Cloud9 looked hazy.
While he played a few games on Cloud9’s challenger roster, Rush soon returned to South Korea before the 2016 Summer Split concluded. For a short period Rush continued to stream in South Korea, but then stopped completely. Rush, in a tweet that’s now been deleted, explained that streaming hindered his growth as a player, and thus decided to forego streaming completely. Since his departure from streaming, Rush continued to play Korean solo queue, but wasn’t picked up by any teams until today.
Along with Rush, KT Rolster also signed rookie mid laner Son “UcaL” Woo-hyeon, and coach Son “S0NSTAR” Seung-ik.
UcaL’s debut will be a highly anticipated match to watch— he’s someone with a ton of hype surrounding him due to his solo queue exploits. It is currently unknown if UcaL will become a substitute, or if KT Rolster intends to make the rookie into a starter. Heo “PawN” Won-seok, KT Rolster’s current starting mid laner, received a ton of criticism in 2017 for his play, making the latter quite plausible.
A former AD carry turned coach, S0NSTAR’s signing was unexpected but not surprising. Lee Ji-hun, KT Rolster’s head coach recently stepped down from his position at the end of the October. Although it’s very unlikely he will take up the mantle as KT Rolster’s new head coach, S0NSTAR’s presence will hopefully start to fill the current void left in the team’s coaching staff after Lee Ji-hun’s departure.
KT Rolster recently won this year’s Kespa Cup tournament. For KT Roslter, this was the team’s first tournament or league victory since the KT Rolster Arrow’s OGN Champions win at the end of 2014.
