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CHICAGO -- Thousands in attendance at the Chicago Theatre cheered as Cloud9, the only North American team to make it to the quarterfinals of the 2016 League of Legends World Championship, walked onstage Thursday night to compete for a spot in the semifinals at New Yorks Madison Square Garden next week. But as the crowd erupted for even the slightest Cloud9 advantage, their campaign was on the brink of coming to an end. The crowd went silent as Cloud9 fell convincingly to Samsung Galaxy in three straight games.Following the loss, Cloud9 waved good-bye to fans and headed out of the arena as a somber mood loomed over the room. North American fans may have been sad, but support Andy Smoothie Ta says his team took the loss well, despite the crushing games.Samsung is a really good team, so were not taking it that badly, but we definitely played really bad as a team; our teamwork just wasnt up to par, Smoothie says. Korean teams punish that a lot more than other teams do.Smoothie says after qualifying for the quarterfinals on Sunday in San Francisco, the team had very little time to practice.I think I gave it our best shot to fix our problems, he says. Our practice was really efficient these past two days, but we only had two days of practice or actually even prepare for these games; we didnt have a lot of time.Cloud9, for their part, looked lost against Samsung Galaxy in their games Thursday night. Despite having a decent early game, the team got obliterated in the late game, with Samsung Galaxy slowly bleeding them out in the second two matchups. Its something that Smoothie said he wishes he and his team couldve addressed beforehand.We tried to fix as much as we could. We kind of knew our problems, he says. We just fixed the outer layer and never really got to the deep stuff. I dont think we couldve fixed much more than that.Coming to Chicago, Cloud9 was North Americas last hope, as their peers, Counter Logic Gaming and Team SoloMid were eliminated during the group stage. For many, this would put pressure on their team, but Smoothie says it felt good coming into the late half of the week. His only regret is his team should have practiced harder during Worlds in order to make a deeper run.Being NAs last hope, it feels pretty good at first, he says. When Worlds started, I think we just didnt take practice as serious as we shouldve; we played a lot of other games [that werent League]. Im not saying other games affected us too much, cause we played them outside of scrimmages and during queue times and stuff. Its not that bad. But I think we couldve been more focused and just commit everything to Worlds. To some extent, we did that, but I personally think we could do more and just get as good as we could while I was there.Prior to joining Cloud9 and making it to Worlds, Smoothie started his 2016 with a rough patch on Team Liquid. Formerly of Team Dragon Knights, which suffered in the summer of 2015 from visa issues that eventually relegated the team out of the League Championship Series (LCS), Smoothie joined Team Liquid as its original starting support. But his time on the starting roster came to an end after one week, and he moved to its Challenger lineup.Ive had phases in my career, where I thought I was the best in my role, Smoothie says. I thought I was the worst in my role towards the end of [my time on] Team Liquid. Now Im up there again. I was just really complacent, even on Team Liquid, I thought I was mechanically gifted and everything would fall into place because I could make plays all around the map. That wasnt really the case though because macro play was a really big factor, and I didnt know a single bit of macro play at all.Team Liquid Academy was unable to qualify for the LCS, and Smoothie left shortly after. Despite the ups and downs, Smoothie says that while working with Team Liquid, he learned a lot thanks to their coach Choi Locodoco Yoon-sub, who taught him wider basics of the team.After leaving Liquid, he traveled to South Korea, where he trialed and boot camped with Cloud9 and joined their roster to split starting time with fellow support Michael Bunny FuFuu Kurylo.Fitting in with these guys was really, really easy; theyre really all very welcoming, and theyre really funny, so its not very hard to get along with them, he says. Theyre just a bunch of memers -- thats the reputation of Cloud9 -- its really easy. If you can just all laugh and just have fun, youre gonna have a good time on the team. From the start, it was really easy to transition into the team.During this week, following the loss of Team SoloMid and comments made by their head coach, Weldon Green, on South Korean boot camps, some North American fans stated on social media that boot camping in South Korea was not worthwhile. As someone who experienced it, Smoothie says he cant take those comments seriously.I definitely think [boot camping in South Korea] was worthwhile; I thought that whole [outrage] was pretty troll, he says. The amount I learned in Korea was insane, I pretty much learned how to play ranged supports in Korea, completely from the start. It was really hard because Im not gonna say the only hard bot lanes are Immortals and Team SoloMid, but even those guys dont punish mistakes as much as hard as Korean teams do ... I dont know, I think its pretty troll to say that going to Korea was a bad thing.And as Cloud9 has been eliminated, the North American League of Legends scene will enter its winter offseason and two-and-a-half months of roster changes, when much of the regions talent will move to new teams.The future for me is that Im just going to keep playing as my body allows me to, until whenever I decide I want to stop playing, Smoothie says. I like being on Cloud9 a lot. I think being on this team is a really good experience for me, and Ill just keep improving and eventually become as the best support in North America. Im not there yet, but maybe get there soon. Pink Air Max 90 Shoes . From filmmaker Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes), The Price of Gold revisits the saga that rocked the figure skating world ahead of the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Winter Games: the assault on Nancy Kerrigan, and the plot that led its way back to her rival Tonya Harding. 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AB de Villiers regards the 2015 World Cup semi-final defeat to New Zealand as the greatest disappointment of his cricket career and believes there could have been other considerations in the selection of the XI that took the field for that match last March.The revelation that racial dynamics played a role in Vernon Philander being selected ahead of Kyle Abbott came in the aftermath of the tournament and was confirmed by CSA, who said transformation targets were part of pre-match discussions, but this is the first time any of the players involved in the match has spoken out.De Villers recollections of the events are published in his book, AB: The Autobiography, which launched in Johannesburg today. The penultimate chapter, called The Dream, goes in-depth into the 2015 World Cup - revealing that South Africa kept a collective diary in which players made daily entries, and reiterating de Villiers conviction that South Africa could lift the trophy.Despite two losses in the group stage, South Africa advanced to the semi-final after achieving their first-ever win in a World Cup knockout match when they beat Sri Lanka in the quarterfinal in Sydney. De Villiers wrote that it was generally assumed the same team would play against New Zealand.That team included three players of colour in Hashim Amla, JP Duminy and Imran Tahir. Throughout the tournament South Africa had played between three and five players of colour in their matches and had not received instruction on any specific number. At 5:30pm on the night before the semi-final, half an hour before South Africas team meeting, de Villiers got a call - he does not say from whom - to tell him that Philander had passed a fitness test earlier and would play instead of Abbott.While considering the reasons for the change in selection, de Villiers explains how he knew that an incumbent player who is injured will automatically go back into the team when he returned to fitness. Philander had spent some of the tournament on the sidelines with a hamstring injury, so if he was fully fit, it would be the norm to recall him. De Villiers also sensed the selectors thought Vernon would thrive in New Zealand conditions, given his ability to move the ball off the seam on tacky surfaces. All the same, it seemed to de Villiers that there could have been other considerations.In contemplating the possbility that there was a quota at play, de Villiers recalls the teams understanding of the situation at that stage. We had been assured that Cricket South Africa was the only national governing body in the country that had declined to set a target for the number of players of colour to be included in the national team but there was a delicate balance to be struck and it was generally understood that, as they chose the side, the national selectors would be conscious of providing opportunities for at least four players of colour.So what had happened? Had Vernon, who was officially classified as coloured, been selected ahead of Kyle, who was officially white, to ensure there were fouur players of colour in the semi-final? Or had the decision been made for purely cricketing reasons?De Villiers does not answer those questions himself.dddddddddddd Instead, in the book, he details the effect it had on him.It depressed me to think of my team-mates in these outdated racial terms, he writes. Would anyone really mind if there were three or four players of colour in our side?At the team meeting, de Villiers did not address the issue either. He delivered a stirring speed using a line from a One Republic song to inspire the team: We owe it to each other to promise each other that with every broken bone were going to leave it out there tomorrow.That night, coach Russell Domingo sent de Villiers a text telling me how much the team needed my leadership and former coach Gary Kirsten also made contact, urging me to be calm and positive. De Villiers did not sleep well, admitted he was emotional and regarded the situation as unnecessary and unfair on everybody.His first thought in the morning was, I hope Vern will be OK, but he vowed not to overreact because I still dont know for certain what happened. De Villiers convinced himself to treat it as just another obstacle to be overcome.South Africa lost the match on the final ball and de Villiers blamed the defeat on their failure to take five clear opportunities ... three possible run-outs and two catches, and not on the selection saga. We didnt lose because of the decision to replace Kyle with Vernon, he writes.In the aftermath, de Villiers was devastated. He chided himself to lose properly even as he cried on the field and later in the change room when he saw his family.In broader terms, de Villiers is supportive of transformation. I was certainly not blind to the wider issues and I regard the process of transformation in South African cricket not as something imposed on the game but as something that was morally the right thing to do.He also maintains that winning an official World Cup with the South African team had become my burning ambition, which suggest he may play a fourth edition of the tournament, in 2019.De Villiers has already been part of three failed campaigns. He put South Africas semi-final loss in 2007 down to simply trying too hard. He does not offer many reasons for the 2011 loss to New Zealand but reveals that then-captain Graeme Smith warned them that, when they got home, daggers and stones will be thrown. Smith did not make the trip back with the team.De Villiers has also competed in six World T20s and captained in two. The 2016 one left its biggest mark on him. South Africa exited in the first round and de Villiers said there was nothing new to say and nothing new to think with regards to that, except that facing the media in such situations was no fun. It will never be much fun until a Proteas team finally goes out and wins one of these ICC limited-overs tournaments. That will happen one day. ' ' '