EPT
Shy No More
![[image loading]](/staff/Fionn/sOs.jpg)
In the history of the GSL, you've always had players come in under the radar. Polt in the Super Tournament quietly progressed through the tournament, everyone believing that it would be his teammate MarineKing who would take home his first GSL title and the $100,000 grand prize. A few seasons later, jjakji, a player with potential, but no hype at all, went on one of a million-to-one run, upsetting everyone on his course to winning his GSL title. Even Seed, one of our more recent champions, was overshadowed by his two teammates Nestea and Mvp heading into the season, but was able to prove his mettle and win the first Protoss championship for LG-IM.
All the talk in this season is going to be about Rain, and rightfully so. He had a strong performance in his first big offline SC2 tournament at WCS Korea, getting into the top six, and then won the Asian continental championship a month later. In the two big Korean leagues, he was one game away from taking out the four-time champion Mvp in the GSL semifinals, and he went on to win the entire OSL, demolishing another former GSL champion in DongRaeGu. With Life and Rain both as the fastest rising stars in this e-sport, both winning their first titles a week between each other, those two will be expected to go all the way to Las Vegas this season.
But what if I were to tell you Rain doesn't actually have the best record of all the KeSPA players? What if I told you that the reigning OSL champion actually lost to the player with the best record? What if I told you he not only beat Rain, but he also quietly knocked out former champion jjakji out of GSL, and forced Seed, the 2012 S3 champion, to go through the Up/Downs to qualify for Code S? In the shadows, with an astronomical 15-2 record so far in televised SC2 games, Woongjin Stars' sOs is ready to make his stand in Code S.
sOs wasn't a star in Brood War. While he was able to qualify right out of the gate as a rookie for the PDPop MSL, he quickly got eliminated with two straight losses. Being used a regular in the Stars line-up, he continued in average fashion, picking up some wins in strings of losing streaks. When he would win two or three in a row, he'd follow it up with five more losses and continue to be just another face on the bench for Stars. When it was announced that Proleague was switching from Brood War to Starcraft 2, it gave him a chance to revitalize his career.
Even when the switch of games was officially announced, it was his teammate and also Code S member Soulkey who everyone was talking about. Whispers of him already in Grandmaster and how he was the best player already from the KeSPA side, all eyes were on how Soulkey would carry the burden of heavy expectations. Stars had historically the weirdest season possibly in Proleague history, having an amazing +19 win difference when it came down to map win/loss differential, but not making the playoffs with an overall match record score of 11-10.
Quietly he had the best statistical season in Proleague, going 9-2 in SC2 games. If he had been seen more as an ace and used more, he could have already been positioned in Code S last season instead of getting a Code A seed. Soulkey and Zero were given the eyes and hype, but it was sOs who was the driving force that kept on winning game after game. His only two losses came in the form of PvP. He dropped a game to Trap, who is 6-2 in the PvP match-up, and CJ's herO, also having close to 70% in the match-up.
He beat Bogus, Sang, Flash, and even the messiah himself Rain during the season. All those players are either in Code S or made it to the Up/Down matches this season. He didn't get this record by going through cupcakes and having easy match-ups. He was put up against some of the very best team's had to offer in Proleague, and he did not drop a single map to a Terran or Zerg.
Code A? He had one of the toughest roads of any player last season. He first had to go up against jjakji, a slumping former champion, but a player with excellent TvP. sOs tore him apart, sent him packing from the GSL, and essentially eliminated the entire HoSeo team from the Korean circuit. Heading into the next round, he made quick work of Sparta, the player who had taken out the former champion Nestea the series beforehand. Finally, his biggest achievement of the whole road to Code S, he went up against Seed and beat him 2-0. In the only match-up where he had a loss, he showed that he was good enough to tear apart one of the strongest players in the world.
So now he sits in Code S, getting put into a group with MarineKing, Sniper and old pal Seed. He is going in as the underdog, only having 11% of the advancement vote on the GOMTV.com prediction polls, but that's because almost no one who didn't follow Code A closely has no clue who he is. He took down two former champions and has an over 80% win rate in his first few months of playing, but was overlooked due to the bigger stories of Rain's dominance, Flash's arrival, and other former Brood War stars trying to qualify for Code S.
Sorry sOs, you can't be shy any longer. You are now known, and I am expecting you to go far this season. I'm not going to go copyright NosOsvember (yes I am) and proclaim him your Season 5 champion (yes I am), but now you know a bit more about the man who has crushed champions without anyone noticing. Get your distress signals ready, folks, because it's sOs' time to fly.
