Lydia

Lydia "Lydia" Picknell is a Canadian SMITE player. She is currently the manager for Paradigm, as well as the coach for Avant Garde.

Biography
Lydia was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada. She lived in Toronto, Canada and London, England in 2014 for culinary school and a culinary internship at a Hilton Hotel. She graduated Police Foundations at Algonquin College in 2012, and previously studied General Law at Carleton University. She used to write a blog that promoted indie country musicians, and found out about SMITE around the end of that blog's lifetime. She has no previous e-sports experience before SMITE, but has been playing since 2012: becoming the first female player to play in an official Hi-Rez Weekly Tournament. She continued to play with AnatoLiy, who she met in a casual game until he joined Team Dignitas, leaving her to play for amateur teams as hunters or supports. She began streaming on Twitch.tv in December 2014 after returning home to Ottawa, Canada. She immediately became coach and manager to eloFisherS, a top Challengers Cup team in Europe who missed the pro league by one win.

She became the manager of Upcoming Stars in August 12th, 2015. The team got picked up by Team JusTus on August 14th, 2015. She left Team JusTus on September 13th to join Paradigm as Assistant Manager and became part owner of Paradigm in November 2015. On March 23rd, 2016 she became the full owner and manager of Paradigm with the departure of Zimpstar.

She is passionate about improving the Smite international competitive scene and currently serves as coach to the Oceanic region with Avant Garde and the South American scene with Rebirth eSports.

Lydia participates in international speaker panels on equality in gaming and promoting eSports, with dates like SXSW, Chicago Video Game Law Summit, Ottawa Game Expo, and more. She's been featured on Polygon, IGN, The Daily Dot, Dexerto, Team Dignitas, and more for her advocacy and coaching ability.

Trivia

 * Lydia was the first female to compete in an official Hi-Rez weekly tournament. She subbed in as support for Reason Gaming after Snoopy slept in.
 * Her original username in SMITE was misschivas, then Lydiapocket.
 * She was the youngest person in Canadian history to run election campaigns (16 years old) - they won.
 * Used to be a major music blogger before getting involved in esports.
 * Former support main (2012 - 2014), now plays solo and mid.
 * She was a celebrity captain of a charity pro-am Divine Intervention tournament with Tiermonster. Team Lydia made top 16 both years. (Losing to Jerbie, PainDeViande and Adapting.)
 * She created Cloudxx with HalfDevil to troll Cloud9 in the final weekly before the Launch Tournament in 2014. They lost to IIIII.
 * She worked for 6 months to get Paradigm Awilix in the game. It was added in March 2016.
 * Her favorite movie is Thor.

Vlogs
Krett's LatAm coaching announcement