The Champions Hidden in Plain Sight
The funny thing about championship teams is that people only start noticing the right decisions after they become obvious.
Nobody questions a roster move after the parade.
Nobody asks why a coach was hired after the trophy photos.
Success has a way of laundering uncertainty.
Months later, everything looks inevitable.
But at the beginning of the year, Team Liquid Philippines looked anything but inevitable.
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The organization had lost Kiel “Oheb” Soriano, one of the most accomplished players in Mobile Legends history. The conversations around the league revolved around absence. Who could replace him? Could anybody replace him?
In the middle of all that noise arrived a young gold laner named Teddy.
He was not the headline.
Most people were too busy discussing who had left to pay attention to who had arrived.
Mitch Liwanag did.
After Oheb’s departure, Dave Viaña, aka Teddy was one of the names she considered, albeit untested and unproven. The players wanted someone more senior, more veteran, with experience on the world stage. Season 17, after all, was the qualifiers for the much coveted Esports World Cup.
Teddy didn’t have spectacular statistics nor did he carry a reputation that forces people to agree with you. She simply liked what she saw: The way he approached the game, the way he carried responsibility. The way he seemed comfortable doing difficult jobs without demanding attention.
The season would eventually reward that faith.
By the end of it, Teddy was a champion. In his rookie season.
But Teddy was not the only person Mitch was betting on.
The more interesting gamble was happening behind the players.
When Team Liquid brought in Ong Wei Sheng, better known as Coach Aeon, many people in the Philippines had no idea who he was. Here was a Singaporean coach being handed the keys to one of the country’s most successful organizations. In a region that treats coaching pedigrees almost as seriously as championship rings, the reaction was predictable.
Who is this guy?
Mitch remembers it clearly.
“I brought him in before they really knew him,” she once told ALL-STAR.
The statement sounds simple until you think about what it actually means.
Every executive likes taking credit for success after it happens. Very few are willing to absorb the criticism beforehand.
At that point, Aeon had not yet won anything that would silence the doubters. His ideas existed mostly as conversations, presentations, and plans. Mitch had to judge something more difficult than results. She had to judge a person.
The same thing happened with Alec Alvarado, aka Coach Sn4p.
Three months before he joined Team Liquid, Sn4p was trying to leave esports.
Not switch teams.
Leave.
He had begun exploring office jobs. He had even tried selling his game account. Years of near misses and disappointments had slowly worn away his belief that there was still a place for him in professional Mobile Legends.
Then he sent out messages.
One of the people who answered was Mitch.
It is easy now to view Sn4p through the lens of championships. Harder to remember that at the time, he looked like someone whose career was drifting toward an ending.
Mitch saw something else.
Not a résumé.
Not a trophy case.
Aeon and Sn4p are people who could not stop thinking about the game. Even on rest days and after scrims, the hardworking duo still obsess over MLBB.
Later, she would say that what stood out about Aeon and Sn4p was how much they loved Mobile Legends and how badly they wanted to win. And both backed it up with a strategy and plan that impressed Mitch Liwanag.
It sounds almost old-fashioned in modern esports, where discussions often revolve around analytics, contracts, and roster construction.
But people who build teams know that obsession still matters.
Sometimes it matters more than everything else.
The championship eventually arrived.
Teddy became one of the league’s most reliable gold laners. Aeon justified the faith placed in him. Sn4p completed one of the most unlikely journeys in MPL history, going from nearly quitting to lifting a trophy.
Looking back, it is tempting to connect the dots and pretend the path was obvious.
It wasn’t.
That is what makes talent evaluation so difficult.
The future version of a champion rarely introduces itself as a champion.
Sometimes it looks like a rookie replacing a legend.
Other times, It looks like a coach nobody has heard of.
Sometimes it looks like a man trying to leave the industry altogether.
The skill is recognizing them before everybody else does.
For years, that has been Mitch Liwanag’s real talent.
Not finding stars.
Anybody can find stars.
She has spent her career noticing people before they become impossible to ignore, finding champions hidden in plain sight.
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