In South Korea, Team Liiv Sandbox has signed 21-year-old Jeon “DangMoo” Su-jin to their second-team League of Legends professional roster. There has never been anything like this in LoL in South Korea. The support player is to play in the “LSB Challengers” team, the junior team of the professional club.
This is the commitment:
In 2021, she became a challenger with Lulu – Had to Hear Men Taunted
Who is the player? DangMoo is a South Korean League of Legends player and creates videos of her games on YouTube (248,000 subs) and Twitch (186,000 followers). She appears with a virtual, green-haired avatar.
She has made a name for herself as a “female challenger” player on the Korean server back in 2021. She mainly played Lulu there.
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“Support mains don’t count”
How do you know them? The success of having brought Challenger 2021, as one of the few women, was rather dismissed by male professionals at the time (via gamerjournalist).
The bot lane of the top team DAMWON KIA was said to be just a “support main”, a Lulu player who just stayed behind. The team later apologized for this.
But other professionals like PawN also said that “support challengers” weren’t really “challengers” and later had to apologize for it.
This was the twitch clip when she became a challenger back then – be careful, the good woman is quite loud:
Some see commitment as ‘broken glass roof’
Why is that special? DangMoo is the first player to make a professional roster in South Korea.
Some observers say she broke “a glass roof” – because normally such a commitment just doesn’t happen, although there is officially nothing to say against a woman’s commitment.
In general, there are very few women who play LoL successfully and are known at this high level.
LoL is considered an extremely toxic game: In such games, many male players are accused of harboring prejudices and clichés against women. Unfortunately, this is repeatedly confirmed by incidents. Well-known streamers like IShowSpeed serve as extremely bad role models.
What the team says: The team’s CEO said (via twitter) that he had spoken to many candidates. DangMoo deserves the chance with her will and skills. People should cheer them on. All players on his team would have either a single room or a double room. DangMoo will get the same space.
So apparently a single room.
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Player is 3 to 6 years older than her teammates, will probably become a substitute
This is behind it: The hiring of a female pro is definitely a milestone in LoL history, but it’s still far from a real breakthrough:
There is therefore a suspicion that the commitment could also be a kind of “PR stunt”: Although the player proved in 2021 that she deserved a chance, viewed soberly, at 21 she is a bit late to start one professional career. All of her fellow players in the junior teams are significantly younger than her, the boys are between 15 and 18 years old.
DangMoo is 21 years old – that’s still insanely young in almost every sense, except for LoL pros. Where 21-year-olds like superstar Chovy say they feel too old now and can’t dodge skill shots as well as they “were young.”
There is a well-known case of a professional female player in the west, but it ended tragically:
The 1st professional player in the LoL league LCS dies at the age of 24