Former Team Coast support player Jamie “Sheep” Gallagher will leave the team to join North American Challenger team Cloud9 Tempest, sources close to the organization tell the Daily Dot.
The Canadian bot laner will replace former support Ritchie “Fade” Ngo, who left the team shortly after the lineup was disqualified from the 2015 Spring Challenger Series. The team has not had a full-time support player on roster since then.
Gallagher first got his big break in League of Legends when he was recruited to join XDG Gaming (formerly Vulcun) after Lyubomir “BloodWater” Spasov retired. Unfortunately, due to a chaotic team environment, XDG placed eighth for the regular split. That dropped them into a relegation battle against LMQ, a full Chinese-import team who dominated the Challenger Series that Spring. XDG lost 0-3 and was knocked down to the Challenger Series. Team Coast was similarly knocked out of the LCS, with its team splitting up and moving on to other opportunities as well.
XDG disbanded on May 2, 2014, with most of its players permanently or temporarily retiring. Gallagher, however, accepted an offer to be on the newly reformed Team Coast on June 9. He teamed up with the likes of top laner Keenan “Rhux” Santos, Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen, Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer, Brandon “DontMashMe” Phan, and Shan “Chaox” Huang in the Head Coach position.
This roster placed first in both Summer Challenger Series, qualifying for the 2015 Spring Promotion tournament. In hopes of qualifying for the upcoming Spring Split, Coast removed Rhux and Goldenglue and replaced them with two Korean solo queue stars, Yongwoo “Miracle” Yi and Sangkyun “Ringer” Park, on September 2.
The team failed to qualify for the LCS, losing in a 0-3 defeat versus Evil Geniuses. After a large amount of roster changes. Coast geared up for the upcoming Expansion Tournament. They smashed through the tournament, making it to the Final Four LAN. Here, they would take down Final Five and Team Fusion and qualify for the upcoming Spring Split.
It wasn’t a good split for the team, however, to put it lightly. With just one win and 13 losses after week seven, they were on a collision course for last place and auto-relegation. In dire straits, Coast merged with Challenger team Final Five, stacking that team’s roster with their top LCS players, Impaler and Sheep, to Final Five and bringing F5 support Kevin “KonKwon” Kwon and Coast sub-jungler Dillon “WelcometoHeaven” Stayner to the LCS roster.
Earlier this week, the Daily Dot reported that the Coast lineup would be disbanding. And on April 7, Final Five failed to qualify for the 2015 Summer Promotion Tournament in a 0-2 defeat versus Team Fusion.
With this major disappointment, it’s no surprise Sheep will move to the Cloud 9’s challenger team, which is considered one of the competitors for top placement in the Summer Challenger Series, shall they qualify. In the qualifier, Sheep and his new team may face notable competitors in the form of Misfits (of Alex Ich and Crumbzz fame) as well as Elomingle, formerly TSM Darkness.
Cloud9 did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
Update 12:18 PM CT, April 11: Cloud9 and Sheep have confirmed the move as the player updated his social media profiles to reflect joining the Cloud9 Tempest team.
Photo via Riot Games/Flickr (remix by Jacob Wolf)
