Academy Standouts highlights the players who performed best in the most recent week of NA Academy play. I’ll discuss a few of the most noteworthy standouts, then list some other players whose performances caught my eye below.
k1ng, Bot, Cloud9 Academy
The king of Academy was back on top this week. Well actually, k1ng was in bot lane, but never let facts ruin a good tagline.
It was a pop-off kind of week for C9A’s star carry, with kill counts of 6, 6, 9, and 6 on 4 different champions and high damage output, despite some struggles getting going in lane, partly due to gank attention.
k1ng Stats
| KDA | KP | GXD10 | DPM | CSPM | |
| Week 5 | 7.7 | 70.8% | -402 | 637 | 8.7 |
| Overall | 4.1 | 64.2% | -193 | 518 | 9.3 |
With the amount of time the 100 Thieves Academy mid laner spent in the river and side lanes in the early game this week, it’s obvious that he’s making a very intentional effort to become a more map-mobile player. Roamin’ ry0ma’s Lee Sin created all kinds of action and took control of games, in ways that I haven’t been used to seeing from him. He also played Tristana and Syndra, using the latter to counter Triple’s Lucian in lane and showing his flexibility between different champion archetypes.
V1per probably could have signed with an Academy team for the Spring split, but he ended up playing in the amateur circuit with Anew Esports, before they were disbanded via competitive ruling, forcing V1per and his teammates to play the rest of the split with no organizational backing.