A Brief History of Echo Fox

After 3-time NBA champion Rick Fox retired from playing basketball in 2004 he looked forward to spending more time with his family. Being an avid gamer as a child, he started playing video games with his son as a way of father-son bonding. In time, he got interested in the world of esports and started looking into acquiring an esports team.

After Gravity Gaming placed fourth in the 2015 summer split, the company went up for sale. Rick Fox finally saw his chance to acquire an esports team and jumped at the chance. On December 18 he bought Gravity Gamings spot in the North American LCS. With only three weeks until the start of the spring split, Rick Fox was given little time to build his organization and lock in his roster, announcing his lineup a mere five days before the start of the season.

This lineup consisted of star European midlaner Henrick “Froggen” Hansen making his debut to North America as the leader of the team. In the toplane, Korean challenger player Jeong-Hun “KFO” Park, hoping to prove to the world that he can perform as well on a team as he does in soloqueue. The botlane duo is Yuri “Keith” Jew in the ad carry role, his only previous LCS experience was subbing for the ad carry for team liquid, Piglet, who was having difficulty with his transfer to North America. And Terry “Big” Chuo who has no professional League of Legends experience, having only played for challenger teams. And finally the jungler, Anthony “Hard” Barkhovtsev who also only has experience in the League of Legends Challenger series.

With a roster that only has one player with any real professional League of Legends experience, this team had a lot to prove coming into the lcs. And the difficulties kept piling on, when after going 1-1 during week 1 both the midlaner Froggen and the toplaner KFO had difficulty with their visas while emmigrating to America, so Echo Fox had to play with a new midlaner and toplaner. They enlisted Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer and Colin “Solo” Earnest from the challenger team Ember, with the former playing midlane and the latter in the toplane. In addition to this, the team suffered roster issues during week 4 day 2, with Benjamin “LOD” deMunck subbing for Keith, and William “Stunt” Chen subbing for Big.

Echo Fox did not win a single game while Froggen and KFO were on the bench.  Being tied for last place at the end of week 4, going 1-7 with that one win being won with the original roster during week 1. Though during week 5 Froggen and KFO’s visa issues were fixed and Echo Fox was whole once again. And since the reintroduction of Froggen and KFO; Echo Fox has gone undefeated the past two weeks. Beating both NRG and Team Liquid, who were tied for a spot in the playoffs. And now Echo Fox, a prior tied for last place team, is in the running for a possible spot in the playoffs. But with a tough schedule coming up in week 7 against TSM (7-5) and the undefeated Immortals (12-0) Echo Fox needs to prove themselves as a top tier team. If Echo Fox becomes the first team to beat Immortals this split, they have the opportunity to be one of the biggest underdog stories in the LCS.

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