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.
Last week brought us the first round of Proving Grounds, with each team playing their first best-of-3 match of the tournament and either advancing to the second round of the upper bracket or dropping to the lower bracket where they will face elimination in their next match.
jojopyun, Mid, Evil Geniuses Academy
The best NA prospect competing in Proving Grounds (Kenvi is off bootcamping with the 100 Thieves main team) was in fine form against Golden Guardians Academy. He posted a 13/1/8 scoreline on Sylas in game 2, to go with 4/2/4 and 4/2/9 games on LeBlanc in games 1 and 3.
jojo’s combination of fearlessness and mechanics were on display, and he did well in creating lane priority and using it to help out Tomio and apply pressure on the map.
jojopyun Stats
| KDA | KP | GXD10 | DPM | CSPM | |
| Proving Grounds | 8.4 | 85.7% | +63 | 636 | 7.8 |
Much of the C9 Academy vs. FlyQuest Academy series was a support duel, with Isles and Dreams trading influence on the map and making big plays for their teams.
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.