The Long Shot
Richard “Kyrmi” Lee on the Valkyries’ Growth, the Importance of Family, and Facing Tough Odds in a Long Season
Richard “Kyrmi” Lee with the Valhalla Valkyries during a season 9 regular season match. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
From the moment they put on their new Valkyries jerseys, the Winner Dogs became the underdogs. As anyone who has made the jump can attest, the SMITE Pro League is a different beast from the Challenger Circuit, and whereas most rookies enter the league to fill openings on established teams, the three Valkyries rookies ascended to the pro-league together, battling through a field of ten teams, including a team of SPL veterans, to claim a top-two finish and the final spot in SMITE’s premier competitive division.
The Valkyries have had to struggle their way into the SPL and, since they qualified in February, through it as well. They would be the first to say that the results haven’t been there. From a fan perspective, the Valkyries have performed more than admirably given their expectations. But they have higher hopes for themselves. They want to win, and losing is frustrating. Still, for all of that frustration—and there has been a lot of it—the Valkyries play with so much heart. Every set they give their absolute all, which is a lot to ask of a team that, for all of their improvment and close games, still cannot find wins consistently.
The heart and soul of this team is, of course, its rookie core. BennyQ is the flashy, unorthodox mid laner who is something of a loose-cannon. Gamma is the support who struggled much of the season, only to become arguably one of the game’s best supports by the end of the year. That leaves Richard “Kyrmi” Lee, the jungler who often flies under the radar on a roster full of big personalities.
None of the reality of this season is lost on Lee. He knows what it takes to get here, and what it takes to stay, too. He tells me of a great personal risk he took, gambling on himself, his team, and their ability to qualify for the SMITE pro league. He takes losses hard and wins in stride. Lee, like the rest of his Valkyries teammates, wants to hold that hammer at the end of the year. He knows the odds are long, but that does not stop him from voicing the desire. Beyond season 9, Lee wants to prove that he has what it takes to earn another year in the league—another shot, however long the odds, at being the last one off the stage.
For Lee, family is everything. His parents supported him even when he took questionable risks to make it to the SPL. Now, he wants to make them proud and repay them for all of their support over the years. No one knows how long the ride will last. For Lee, it’s all about getting another year, and another, and another. If he can do that, the sky may just be the limit.
I sat down with Lee to discuss the Valkyries’ growth as a team, the importance of family, and how to find motivation in a long, difficult season.
[The following interview has been edited for clarity.]
The Long Lane: First of all, congrats on making it to the SPL this season. You had a strong year in SCC last year. Did you get any SPL offers coming into the season?
Kyrmi: When I was SCC? Yeah, I did, actually. It was in the middle of phase two and Layers left to go join the Titans and the Bugs asked me and Screammmmm to try out and maybe one other jungler. The way the situation went is that there were two ADCs and two junglers. Myself, Renjaru, Screammmmm and Stuart. And it was just a mix of the four of us trying with different people. The first two days were Screammmmm. The last two days were supposed to be mine. After I tried one day with the Bugs, I realized that it felt fine, but not only did I think I'd be jumping into SPL too early, and this isn't offense to the Bugs at all, but I think if I joined, I wouldn't make them enough of a better team that it wouldn't just ruin my name. I felt really confident with the Winner Dogs at the time that if we qualified through, we would get either better offers individually or we would make it as a team. So that’s what I planned to stick with. I let them know, ‘I'm just going to be honest. I think that I won't be the best fit for this team. So I wish you guys the best of luck. I think Screammmmm would do really well for you guys.’ And sLainy said ‘no hard feelings, I appreciate the honesty.’
TLL: So that was during season eight, right?
K: Yeah.
TLL: What about in the off season? During the roster crunch, phone ringing at all? Any teams interested?
K: For guaranteed SPL roster spots, nobody on our team got one. Myself included. I think Benny got an offer. At the start of the year, Sam was supposed to be kicked from the Dragons, but they couldn't find any other jungler, because Twig and Screammmmm didn't want to leave their respective teams. So they picked Sam back up. But it was supposed to be a roster with Sam and Benny and a few other people. It never really stuck, though, and he just decided to stay with us. But none of us got offers, no.
TLL: That meant that the only real way into the SPL was through the play-in. You had a really successful SCC team. How did you all make that decision to stay together, to go into that tournament and try and get a top two finish?
K: We talked about this a lot as a team, but during SCC, because any team that had potential from SCC or below and any SPL team, Hi-Rez reached out and said, ‘We are doing relegations next year, you are a team that's probably going to be one of the teams. Here's how we plan to do it. Don't let this leak out to the public but use this information as you will.’ We talked about it a lot. We decided that if people get crazy offers, if they get another offer that they really want to take, they're welcome to do so. But then everyone else is allowed to also. There was a risk of people leaving and then the whole team falls apart. But we all really wanted to stick together and tough it out because we knew that we'd be good enough, even if none of us got offers, and that we could make it through the play-in.
TLL: Does that affect your confidence one way or the other? Maybe some doubt comes in when teams aren't interested, or perhaps there's an extra chip on your shoulder?
K: My other teammates especially—they’re super confident people. They're great to be around. I think most of them didn't really care about not getting offers because they were really committed. For me personally, I understood that I wasn't going to get an offer. It felt a little bad that we didn't get outright accepted [into SPL] over one of the other rosters, but we kind of understood. We were SCC. We needed to prove it.
We were extremely confident once we saw the rosters. Onis are making it through, and then unless we horribly mess up against the Duck Club, we're going to make it through. That's kind of how we felt going into the tournament. It was super anxiety inducing because, and I've talked about this on the broadcast before, but Gamma and I both were in college at the time and the tournament was in February. So the dropout point for college to keep your money would be gone. At that point, we had to decide, are we sticking with college and then dropping out if we make it? Are we losing our money that way? Or are we just dropping out immediately and taking the risk? We both decided to take the risk. The whole tournament was really anxiety inducing because I was a year off of getting my bachelor’s and I took this risk. I was thinking, is this worth it? Am I trolling? Am I throwing my life away? But it's been so worth it, and I'm so glad I took that risk.
TLL: Wow, that is quite the risk. It definitely puts some extra weight on that tournament. And of course, you only need a top two finish. And you mentioned, you know, the Oni Warriors were going to get through, but you ended up playing them for that first spot. Even though you did not have to win that set to make SPL, how important was it for you to have a strong showing in that set even though you haven't had the same amount of experience as the Warriors?
K: I think it was really important for us to have a good showing in that set for a few reasons. On one hand, obviously we aren't as experienced, but if we show that we can go toe-to-toe with them or we show that we're able to beat them, it proves that we deserve to be in the league. It isn't like, ‘oh, we're getting lucky with Fire Giant steals,’ or ‘we're “cheating” with level two ganks like some of the other teams had against them.’ It's that we're making better plays on the map. We're showing that we're a team that deserves to be SPL and that we want it. Winning that set would have been amazing for us because we would have made a huge statement. And we also planned to steal the Oni name if we qualified. Like, instead of being the Valkyries, we would have taken the Oni’s jerseys from them if Hi-Rez allowed it.
TLL: That would have been really exciting.
K: Yeah, we would have walked up on stage and then grabbed the Oni jerseys.
TLL: That would have been a great moment. But you do get the second spot at that tournament. You get the Valkyries’ jerseys. And of course, Valkyries in season eight has kind of like a historically difficult year. Obviously, there were the visa issues, struggled to find set wins consistently. Was there a little bit of a weight to that jersey when you got it? The short history of this franchise is all losing, and now you all kind of have to turn that around.
K: Yeah. So when we got it, we were worried about the “Valks Curse,” like we're just going to be another bottom end team that has to go through unlucky scenarios or like we have a lot to prove. That was like the last Valks. And I think the community perception was a little different because it's like, no way they can be as bad as the last Valks. So we kind of had that going in our favor. That can be pressure too, though. When we ended 2-12 in phase two, it's like, damn, are we at really that bad? Do we suck that much? And honestly, it took us a long while to get adjusted to SPL and really start hitting our groove, but I think we finally found it and we're looking to do really well for this phase [and Worlds].
TLL: And we talked a little bit about sticking together coming into the year, but, at least during the regular seasons, you haven’t performed, I think, as strongly as you would have hoped. You had some stronger performances at the tournaments that I want to talk about later. But there have been a number of roster spots that have opened up during the year. Of course, the Scarabs keep getting gutted. Has anyone reached out to you all? What has it been like sticking together, even through those higher seed positions opening up?
K: I think our philosophy on that changed a bit when we got into SPL. Obviously, we want to stick together and do what's best for us. However, and we've all talked about this, and I'm sure even if we didn't, people would share the sentiment. If somebody got a really sick offer, they should try and take it because it's so good for them, right? And it would be unfair to the person to make them feel bad for that. I don't think any of my teammates have gotten offers. I could be wrong. Other than that I've gotten offers for the Dragons, and then when they picked up Screammmmm, I got a trial for the Bugs. And then I think I would have gotten a tryout for the Titans if they decided not to keep Layers. But none of them really went through because for the Dragons, they just immediately jungler swapped. The League told them, 'Hey, if you guys want to swap junglers, you can do that.’ And eventually that happened. So there was no trials done for that team. The Bugs still wanted to try people out. However, with scheduling and situation, like, my trial would have been one set against the Eldritch Hounds because of game days and when they had time. And they didn't want to screw over Sam. I [realized] it wasn’t worth it for me. I shouldn't do this to my boys. And it would just be detrimental for me to try this. And then with Titans, they wanted Layers back, which is totally fair. The league gave them a really good chance to play again.
TLL: All things considered, you're still in a really good situation [with the Valkyries]. And that Dragons jungle position, it's a little bit cursed playing jungle for a team with Pegon. I can't imagine playing jungle when you’re the second best jungle on the team. [Laughs]. He's looking over at you. If you're not performing, he's taking your role in some games.
K: I think it's really cool that he does that, but I think that's mainly a Screammmmm thing as well. I think Screammmmm is the one who likes to do that because when he cues ranked, he likes to do a lot of mid. Bastet mid was his big thing. He did it against us and owned us with it. It's kind of disrespectful [laughs], but hey, we lost. He did the same thing with Atlas, with a bunch of people, and it makes drafting against them really hard, and they're also just probably having fun. So big respect to them.
TLL: So in seasons 3, 4, 5, there was a team people refer to now as old RivaL. They didn't win, but they were the runner up twice in a row, seasons 4 and 5. But in late season 3, early season 4, they were not a great team. They were playing under Cyclone GG. They were basically all rookies who came up together and decided to stick together. And they sort of languished at the bottom of the SPL for a while until they were able to improve, get to the top, and sort of wait out these other teams who didn't stay together, and really build off of their synergy. Do you see any similarities between their story and what you're doing now with the Valkyries, when over half the team hasn't played in the SPL before. You all come up and slowly but surely improve.
K: Yeah, I think you worded it really well. I think the story feels really similar to the start of the year for us, where we all qualify, where most of us are rookies, where we stick together, we ride through it together. We all go through and are grinding through and we're trying to get better and we don't make our changes like phase 1 and phase 2. Obviously we have bad showings. We lose a lot of sets. We're extremely inconsistent, but it's becoming less and less. We're becoming more consistently good and we're also playing better. We're not losing confidence. And we're also taking games off of big teams and showing that we should be winning sets. We're throwing a lot of our sets which is where we lose, and that is honestly the worst feeling, but it shows that we're competitive.
TLL: The other thing is, when the league is so tight as it is this year, a bottom seed doesn't mean this year what it meant last year, for instance. And if you can take games off of the Leviathans—who keep finding ways to win these tight sets—or you beat the Kings, which is not supposed to happen from the outside looking in. The gap between these bottom teams and these top teams is not what it used to be. And you talked about inconsistency, but you have performed better at the two playoff events so far. How do you manage that? Because I imagine part of being able to show up to those tournaments, there has to be an element of belief and confidence that you can show up and play those games well. But how do you show up to those tournaments and believe that you can perform?
K: Even though it's been hard during the regular phase, for both phases, especially phase 1, a lot of it was that we weren't too hard on ourselves. We obviously felt bad about losing, but it was about soaking up as much information as we can, getting as good as we can, trying to keep up with the meta, learn how to properly play the map as SPL players, because it's very different from when you play SPL versus SCC. It's an entirely different ball game and it's something that really didn't click in our heads until we had to face that every single day. And I think we started to get it towards [Spring] Masters.
Phase two, especially towards the end, once we started getting those wins, we started using that as momentum, where I'd argue that we probably should have won the set against the Titans if we played a lot cleaner [in game 3]. I think they played a good game themselves, but we should have closed that out multiple times. And we just felt really good riding that high about how much progress we made from the end of the phase leading into the Masters, especially phase two, and then writing that into phase three.
TLL: That set against the Titans specifically, a lot of fans and casters were really pointing to that set and saying ‘Valkyries have arrived.’ Because this is the team that won Spring Masters. They were runners up at worlds last year, and then you take them the full three games. But you don't win that set. How difficult is it to pull out these positives from these close sets against really good teams? Even though you're not in the win column just yet.
K: It feels really tough to do so, and it's especially harder for my teammates. After we lost, we all went out to get Ramen together and a lot of us were extremely frustrated that we lost when we thought we should have won. But for me, I took solace in the fact that we could have won. And not only that, there's so many sets, especially during phase two, where we were getting blown out. We're making no plays on the map, we're not doing anything proactive. So having multiple sets before that and a set that we really should have won, it sucks that we lose that and throw that, but it feels good to know that that's the path we're moving on to. And it just means that we're going to get more consistent and become better players come Worlds time.
TLL: I mentioned this in my interview with SoloOrTroll. I don't know if you saw this, but he had tweeted that was the hardest set he'd ever played.
K: Yes.
TLL: When you see that, does that factor in a little bit? It's like, ‘okay, we made this extremely tough for them.’
K: Yeah, there were a lot of Titans players who publicly tweeted, ‘GGs to the Valks, they've improved insanely well.’ Specifically SoT and Cyclone are the ones that are coming to mind. And then on streams, I know that PandaCat and other Dragons members talked about how they thought we were a really solid team both at Masters and leading into phase 3. So it feels good to know that even though our standings are bad and we have an abysmal win loss in the regular season, other teams think and know that we are good players. So it gives you that reassurance that these other veterans that are really good at the game think that we have what it takes, and we're that close.
TLL: And this phase as well has had some highs and lows. You beat the Bolts, which was a really impressive 2-0, then beat the Kings, took a game off the Levis. But you lost a three game set to the Scarabs in their first appearance with Hurriwind. Walk me through that. What happened in that set?
K: It’s frustrating to think about because for me that killed our momentum. It actually set us back so bad. Shout out to Hurriwind and Jarcorrr. They both played really well. Sam had a really good game on Thor. And for the rest of us, we all played so below our average for all of the scrims we were playing and all of the game days that we've had before that. All of us were playing complete trash. And it was really upsetting to feel like—I will say that it felt like we disrespected them a little bit, especially because of the new roster changes that came in. People will point to the draft and I think that definitely does have an impact, having a weird game too. But it isn't the reason we lost the set. And we could have played the draft better. I think we made the game hard on ourselves with that.
TLL: You mentioned the draft and you also mentioned that you all played collectively a bit worse than you're accustomed to seeing. Is that a game plan problem? Maybe the mechanics weren't there that day? Or was it a lot of it just the drafts?
Lee preparing for a match during the regular season. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez studios.
K: And they banned in a way that we didn't expect them to and it made it a little confusing for what we wanted to do. We had the start of a plan for one of our drafts and then kind of veered really far away from it, which kind of messed up our draft. And it doesn't make the game easy. But we shouldn't have like lost the game off of draft alone. I think people were missing a lot of abilities. Everyone has those days. It happens. I think people were making really bad calls and we weren’t playing as a team whereas I felt like [the Scarabs] were playing really well together, especially in their mid trio.
TLL: We talked a lot about how much of a mental grind the season is when you're trying to improve and the results just don't come easily. When you stuck together after the season, you kept your coach Sharks, and how instrumental has he been for the team and what does he provide for you all?
K: Sharks is great. He's super valuable for us. He's really good at a lot of different things and he's even better when he's in person. Unfortunately, he gets screwed over by the time zone difference where he's 14 or 15 hours ahead. On game days it's always in the middle of the night for him. He always is playing at the worst times imaginable, but he still shows up every time. He's working really hard. He helps us with drafts a ton. He helps us with VOD reviews. I think one of the biggest things he does is he's a really good mediator and a good question asker. He knows that some of the players on our team maybe won't speak up as much until they feel like invited into the conversation. So he's really good at getting a conversation going and flowing.
TLL: You mentioned VOD review, which I think is not something people talk too much about, especially when interfacing with the fans. What is that process like for you all? Do you all focus more on SPL games or you watch scrims as well? And how do you all approach that?
K: Anybody that we're going to play for the week, we watch SPL games. Nobody forces anybody else to watch. Like if we don't play Bugs or bolts and they're playing each other and we don't want to watch them excuse me, for example, we don't force ourselves to. Right, but most of us watch most of the SPL games anyways. And then if there's something important that goes on in a Scrim, we watch it. If we lose an SPL set and there's important things in it, we watch it. We don't watch them super frequently and I don't think most teams do either, but there's always small snippets to go through in most games that you can look at that will help you improve. Right. I think that catching those really good are really good. And then there are sometimes where there are just full games that you just kind of have to sit through and chug out just to make sure that you aren't missing anything that important.
TLL: Then [earlier in the phase] you beat the kings. What was that like? Was that the most validating set of the year?
K: There’s so much about it that was so important for us. Losing to the Bugs really, really screwed us over in terms of standings. So it becomes a problem in terms of now we needed to win a lot more sets because of head-to-head. Beating the kings not only helps with that, it helps bring our morale and our mental back. Barra mentioned this when he beat the Onis in your interview. Getting that morale boost makes scrims a lot better. It makes hanging out a lot easier. It makes playing the game and grinding ,it all makes it so much more desirable. That set felt so good for a lot of different reasons, but for me personally, we haven't beaten the Kings all year, so finally being able to take it away and having what I felt like was a pretty strong performance individually, all of it just felt so good.
TLL: You mentioned feeling really good about your own performance, and that was the week where beads and aegis couldn’t be built together, so most of the backliners not having that combination opting for beads and no aegis. Did that change significantly the impact that assassins could have in the team fight stage?
K: Yeah, for sure. I think any stage of the game, it will impact. There's a lot less counterplay that these characters have and they have to get a lot more creative with it. Another thing to point to on the Kings’ set is that Benny is a player who likes to do really weird things and we've seen that throughout all the year. He's way more comfortable not having aegis or not having beads compared to some of the other players. He'll go beads and meditation on Agni and make it look really good because he's comfortable playing with it, where some other mid laners, like BMT probably isn't that used to doing so.
TLL: People have mentioned how entertaining the games were and have suggested that maybe some implementation of this where you can't build both relics at the same time would be good for the game. What is your opinion on that?
K: It would have to be a start of the season or a mid-season change. That is like that is a very, very big change that changes a lot of SMITE. There would obviously have to be a lot of balancing around it for it to work. I would be cool with both sides. I obviously don't use aegis that much, so it wouldn't bother me. However, I think that it would have to be handled really carefully. It would take a lot of time to adjust to, like the 9.5 [time to kill adjustment] patch. But it could definitely make the game more fun and interesting. But then some people would be really frustrated with the meta where everyone is just looking for true one-shots. I also think that if they were to either get rid of aegis or heavily nerfed it, they should introduce other carry relics that would be valuable for them to pick up. Because most games that carry players play, they don't have to think about their relics choices. Beads, aegis, or maybe shell. Maybe carry players will pick up teleport like they do in League of Legends. Teleport meta would be interesting.
TLL: Speaking about if they removed aegis, I would be really entertained to see BennyQ’s Poseidon with no aegis, just on a weekly basis. The prospect is a little bit scary. BennyQ, in general, he's a really talented player and a bit of a strange player. What's it like having him on your team? He's got kind of a unique personality and unique picks.
Lee looking longingly at BennyQ, fellow Valkyries teammate. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez studios.
K: He's one of the players that I have had the highest highs and lowest lows with, because we've lost a lot and none of us before have been really that used to losing, especially after coming off of a year of stomping everyone in the SCC. He's really good at trying to break the meta. He's really creative with the game and thinks that many different things could be good. Like Terra mid, Agni mid with med even before the aegis bug. Even Freya mid. He likes doing different things and he thinks that it's good to do so and it helps push the game forward. He is really, really good at the game. When we're losing a lot, it can feel frustrating to want to try all these really weird things because sometimes there are times where we try a bunch of different stuff and it doesn't work out. Whether that's us as the Valkyries not having enough trust in him or those pics truly not working, sometimes it's really hard to decipher which of the two it is.
But as we've played more and more, we've given him more and more trust to tell us what he actually thinks is really good, what he thinks is just really fun, and what he wants to try, whether it's serious or wacky. And we just give him like we let him go at it and he gives us wins. And he plays really well. And I think we've gotten more accustomed to it when we've obviously started winning more.
TLL: I think the mid picks this phase have been really interesting. The way the phase started with the Leviathans losing to the warriors, they played mages in Duo lane and put physicals in mid and I know BennyQ played a lot of Ne Zha mid, which was very fun to watch. What’s going on with the meta that mages that the have fallen out of favor?
K: For mages being weaker in mid than maybe hunters or assassins, a lot of it just comes down to they farm a lot slower and they struggle not only with red buff but sometimes shoving waves and getting around the map. They are just weaker early where the value of hunters can be so strong. Hunters can do all of their jungle camps really quickly, they can rotate just fine, they can one-shot objectives if you go double hunter, which is kind of the meta we've been seeing from a lot of teams until this aegis bug. Mages do objectives slower and that doesn't feel good for a lot of different teams. The best mages you will see are Vulcan, Poseidon, Morrigan, sometimes you'll see a Yu Huang. You’re seeing a lot of characters that can get around the map really fast or have really great secure and these are the only mages that are any good because they can do it quickly.
TLL: Do you think that there are any item changes needed for mid laners that to kind of give them back their niche in mid? Because they seem a little bit lacking in identity as a class compared to, I think, some of the other classes in the game.
K: It is always really tricky to balance mages to make them better without making them feel super gross to play against. With the introduction of 9.5 especially, it becomes really hard for them to clear things, as I've said before. But I think making red buff weaker so that mages can do it just fine I think would help bring them back into the meta. You could nerf the power hunter mids, like transcendence and the crusher and stuff. But then that would hurt junglers and that feels really bad. And then if you nerf bluestone anymore, warriors get screwed over. I think you have to just start touching the base stats of hunters that are super common in mid lane rather than duo lane. And then maybe just some slight mage buffs where you also reduce down the health or the damage or like the execute range on red buff. I think those changes would help shift the meta back towards a mage -avored meta.
TLL: So you and Gamma and Benny were all nominated for rookie of the year along with Pegon.
K: Was it Stuart as well?
TLL: Yeah, because he didn't play a full year last year. For your money, who's rookie of the year this year.
K: Pegon. It’s going to be a bit of a popularity contest. We are definitely nowhere as popular as Pegon or the Dragons specifically. He's had a really crazy year. He's played extremely well. Even one of Masters, he's looked insane, and I think he deserves it. Any of the rookies that are nominated, especially the ones with the Valks, could totally get it and it would make sense. Obviously all three of us would like to win, but I don't think any of us are having crazy high hopes about it. It's just like, hey, if we get it, that's really cool, that feels really good. And if we don't, oh, well.
TLL: The case I would make for your teammate BennyQ, just in comparison to Pegon because they play the same role, but this goes for you and Gamma as well, is that Pegon has been put in a much more favorable position to immediately succeed. Whereas you all are grinding together, starting SPL together, learning the game at the highest level, basically from the ground floor. And so I think looking at what you three been able to do, not just from an improvement standpoint, but a statistical standpoint as well. I think Gamma leads supports in kills by a decent margin.
K: He’s so sick.
TLL: He has been fun to watch, especially this split. I think when you factor in that context, the individual performances that you all put up have been really impressive. Even if that's not enough to discount what Pegon's done, I think it's worth mentioning and being proud of.
K: Thank you. I wouldn't call it ‘mickey,’ as some SMITE players would say, but he's obviously had an easier route in his rookie year because he's gotten to play with such amazing veterans. Most of those guys have been back-to-back world finalists. They're all really great players. They're all veterans, are all really experienced, so it's a lot easier to lean on those kinds of players to improve and do well, where we obviously have to climb through it ourselves. Individually, it feels really good. Personally, I think Gamma has had the greatest individual improvement out of any player in the league, where he played well at the start. It was really shaky for him and me included and the rest of the Valkyries, but I'd argue that he's one of the best supports in the league. Top three, top four. He is so clean with it and he's only getting better and I think it's just really impressive what he's done.
TLL: I haven’t checked since last week, but I know that he had a pretty big kill lead over any other support, which, on one hand, he’s so good. On the other hand, it’s like he's taking your last hits. Can't let that happen. [Laughs].
K: He would love to hear that. Anytime we play ranked, anytime we're scrimming, unless it's super, super serious, I never get a kill on this guy because he always will take my last hit. So I'm always down in gold because he has like the support starter free gold money hack that he's getting, plus he's getting 300 gold from any kills that I'm basically getting for him. [Laughs]. But on game days, he doesn't do it on purpose, but he plays a different style. He likes doing extreme damage and helping dive and I think that it's really valuable for him to do so. He does it really well and it's good that he's sticking to his guns.
TLL: Speaking of Gamma just a little bit, there was some Twitter beef between him and Zapman, and I don't want to stoke any drama, but for you as a team, getting to scrim the best team in the league right now and then losing out on some of that valuable practice time, does that affect your confidence going into the week, to lose that practice and to have a bit of a distraction in the background ?
K: If we were really down bad, maybe it would affect our confidence. For me, the whole situation is just frustrating. What virtually happened was we were playing through game one of our scrims. Gamma is spam taunting and we're all surprised and we're asking him to stop, but it is quite funny. And if the enemy team cares enough, they can just press the mute button. There's a function in the game for that, right? If other teams do it to us, we don't cause a big fuss, we just mute. But after the game is over, he's asking Gamma—I think the words were, ‘yo Gamma, stop with this ego shit. Try to get some respect in the league before you start doing this.’ And we all though, ‘what?’ He's just spam laughing because Ronngyu and the rest of the team also did it to us most of the year, whether we found it annoying or not. We didn't complain or care about it. Zapman also said that if Gamma does it again, then it's GG's for the set. So Zap gets first-blooded in lane again, and Gamma laugh spams for killing him and he leaves and they f6. I personally think that was really stupid. He was probably just having a bad day that got way blown out of proportion. And I don't really blame it on him for blocking Gamma on Twitter. Because if you're having a bad day and you have a situation that's really unfun, and then you go on Twitter and see that you're getting roasted, I wouldn't want to deal with that either. However, the way it was handled was pretty dumb, but it will just make our next set that we play fun and matter a little bit more. I actually think that starting beef in the league, even though this is kind of silly, it's really healthy [for the league] because it makes matches mean more in the regular season. When you have matchups that matter more because there is weight behind them, it makes people more interested.
TLL: You will pull in more viewers, people will talk about it more.
K: Right. I think it would only be healthy for the league.
TLL: So in 2019, you tweeted that your mom was cancer-free. What was that experience like for you? And how does it influence your outlook on life or in professional SMITE?
K: I was still playing SMITE competitively. I was SCC at the time when I learned. Obviously, it's stressful. It's a really tough situation to deal with. My mom means means the world to me. She's one of my biggest supporters, her and my dad. They both watch all of my SPL sets. It’s very endearing to me how much they care and how supportive they are of this. Learning that she was getting sick and dealing with that when she already had some other illnesses that I won't go into, it was super scary because—how do I word this? It was never bad enough to risk her dying, but there's always a chance. So the first few months were really, scary, and then she's doing fine for many, many months. And then maybe a month where it looked really bad again. She got through it and now she's doing just fine. But it was tough on her day to day, and obviously we had to help her out, but she got through her cancer. She was doing great, and then a year or two later, she gets cancer again and I though, ‘are you kidding me?’ What has this poor woman done to deserve this, not once but twice. Thankfully, it was caught early and everything was done really well. For me, playing SMITE with that, there were certain weekends where you load into SCC, and it takes a toll on you. You can’t fully get into the zone for the sets. So that might have been more challenging. But overall, it helped me become a better individual both for myself and her, because I was able to grow up a little faster, help around the house more because I would have to help take care of her, which I love doing. She totally deserves it, but she did well, and I'm really proud of her and how strong she is.
TLL: How important has your family been to you, especially as you get into the SPL and move to the area? What has their support been like for you?
K: My family is vital to me. They've been extremely supportive. I think I mentioned it before, but they've watched every single one of my sets when at first, my dad was a little worried about me saying I want to drop out of college to go become a professional video game player. He said, ‘I'll support you whatever you do, but that seems kind of risky and kind of dumb. You're really close to your degree, and that felt a little discouraging.’ But when I go to the SCC LAN, he was watching that, and he thought it was the coolest thing ever. Like, ‘oh my god. Drop out. Go do this if you really want to. We'll support you the whole way. This is so sick.' He was a really big fan of sports as a kid. I think he always dreamed of wanting to do something similar like this with sports, but he never got the opportunity. He's happy with what he's doing now. But it probably felt like he got to live a part of his life vicariously through me. So that does feel really good that I get to do what I love and also make him happy. Every day [he and my mom] watch, any game day, any content. They'll definitely be reading this interview, and they'll love every piece of it. Super supportive, always wanting the best for me, and I definitely would not be in the SPL without their support and help.
TLL: Shout-out to Kymri’s parents, then. Thanks for reading, y’all. I really appreciate it.
So, how did you get into SMITE? When did you start playing competitively, and what did you play before?
K: I got into gaming through my dad because my dad was a huge gamer. Before I was born, he was big on EverQuest One and then EverQuest Two was coming out around that time. He would just play in his office, and I'd just come over and watch because I was a kid and it was really interesting. And he would explain the game to me, and he loved doing so. And then I got to an age where I could play it, so we'd play together, and it was really sweet being able to do so. It helped us really bond well together, and it was just super fun. I got into games through other things as well, like console, but I think EverQuest was the big one that made me really love gaming. It's also a place where I got my name. I'll get into that in a second. But the way I got into SMITE was from GameTheory. They made a YouTube video about one of the SMITE gods, and I just thought it was cool.
TLL: I remember that video!
K: So I thought, ‘this seems like a cool thing.’ And I think that I went on twitch and I saw Allied streaming. I downloaded it and I played a bunch with some of my friends from high school that I convinced to play, and we had a bunch of fun with it. Then eventually I played a ton of ranked by myself. Got better at the game, slowly, of course, but eventually some online friends said we should build a team together.
TLL: Where did the name come from?
K: Before Kyrmi, my gamer tag for things was RRL22. I'm named after my grandfather, so my name is Richard R. Lee the second. So I added another two that was my gamer tag. I didn't really like it for a while, but I couldn't think of anything more creative. My dad and I stopped playing EverQuest too, after a while. He got busy with work, I got busy with school. Our times didn't really line up well. We went back to it after a while because there are times like realign and we're like, hey, this could be fun. The game was slowly dying and it got to a point where if we wanted to do any 24-man content or 40-man content, we would need a lot more people. And we just didn't have that. So a buddy of his created a program where we could multibox pretty simply with five to ten characters each. So I was running through all the names of an automatic name generator. I've got a bunch of random different fantasy names. One was Kyrmi. And at first I really didn't like it because I thought it was pronounced like cry-me, and he corrected me. So I just started sticking with that going forward. But my dad dropped me into gaming, supported me all the way through, gave me my gamer name, and I'm here now. So I thank a lot of this to him.
TLL: Obviously Worlds is still coming up, and I know you all have high hopes for that tournament and the end of the year. But looking forward, have you talked a little bit about plans for season ten? Any thoughts about how committed you all will be to staying together? Does the outcome at Worlds factor in a lot to that?
K: It's hard to say going forward. We still have a while until Worlds. Another two months maybe. It comes down to a lot of things. But if everything goes well and we all enjoy playing with each other, I'm sure that we would probably be down to stay with each other. You know, I think that if somebody has a really crazy offer and they want to take it, I personally wouldn't blame anyone. I can't speak for my teammates on that. I think most of us would still share the same thing if we have a really abysmal year, maybe people want to go and try different opportunities, try different players. We've had a year. We've progressed really well together, and we all want to stick together. I think it's too early to say. For me, I'd be down for both options. I really love these guys. I also think that there are also a lot of really cool people on SMITE elsewhere. Whatever happens, happens.
TLL: You mentioned you almost got your bachelor's degree. What were you studying?
K: I started at a community college for computer science because I thought I'd go into that. I swapped to psychology, and I almost had my minor in cognitive neuroscience as well. And after that, I would have gone on to get my master’s in clinical psychology. I really wanted to become a therapist, and that's probably where I would be now, starting my master’s. Sorry to get into psychology, which I think you also majored in? Did I see that in your bio? Or am I thinking of someone else.
TLL: I'm actually a PhD student in English literature, so I have my master's degree in literature, and I study Renaissance history plays as my day job. And I teach courses at the university as well.
K: How is that? Is it fun?
TLL: It's super fun. I am doing what is called exam reading right now, which is reading for qualifying exams. I have to show that I'm an expert in my field and qualified to teach, so then I can advance to the dissertation stage. So I have to read a lot of different texts and take an exam next fall. Because of that, my schedule is flexible enough to do The Long Lane, because I can read for exams whenever I want to. Unfortunately it turns out that whenever I want to read is actually never.
K: That’s something similar in the SPL. When you have a normal job, you have to go or you get fired, right? When you show up for game day, you have to show up or you get fired. This is something that I think streamers can relate to. But if I don't want to play ranked, I don't have to. And I do, because I want to, and I want to get better. But there are days where I don’t feel like clocking in, so-to-speak. I'm just not going to play ranked. I think that's the luxury of the job, but also a curse because if you really want it, you have to self-motivate.
TLL: That’s really cool and interesting that you wanted to be a therapist. That makes sense. That's why the Valks' mentality is so strong. We have therapist Kyrmi talking them through it. Do you ever think, and it is hard to say how long this ride will last, but is there a world in which you go back to school when SMITE is done?
K: For me, and I've said this to a few different people, my goal this year is to place as high as we can and improve and learn. Winning worlds would be sick, and I think that's something that could potentially be on the high horizon for us. But it was always, like, ‘get another year no matter what happens.’ Next year, I want to be in the league again. I want to prove that I can do well. And I want to ride this out because this is a really phenomenal experience to have. If it ends shorter than expected, yeah, I would go back to school. If I have more time and my credits are still active, then, yeah, I'd go back and become a psychologist. I think that would be something I still have a passion for and something that, to this day, I still want to try to do, but I didn't drop out of college just to do one year and choke it up because I'd be so disappointed in myself.
TLL: Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say we would be happy to see you for another season. Anything you want to shout out here at the end?
K: I’ve said it before, but shout out to the team. Shout out my family. They both helped me a ton in growing as a person and as a player, and I couldn't do it without them. Shout out my dog, Addison. Love her to death. I miss her dearly every day. It's the one bad thing about moving from Georgia. That’s all I have to say. I really appreciate you inviting me on this. I think you have something super sick going on here.
Kyrmi will return in January when the Valkyries will play through the SMITE World Championship placements for a spot on the main stage in Arlington.
