Several players on my secondary school hockey team were crutch characters in the long run. When the team started and most of us were new to the sport, there were a few with a bit of previous experience seemed unstoppable (we used to compare our star midfielder to Neo, seriously) and were universally regarded as indispensable members of the team. Perhaps partially because of that status (or because they'd already had the few years of improvement due to most casual players) they never really improved in later years, and quickly became bench warmers - several even quit. I'm sure plenty of other school teams have had the same thing happen.

This troper *is* a CrutchCharacter in the game of Dance Dance Revolution. Within 2 years, I've went from never having heard of the game to being ranked top 10 in North American and top 100 in the world (using Konami's official internet ranking). I suspect (though cannot prove) that I was the number one player in my city, if not my province. In the following 5 years, at least 20 of my peers from my same city have surpassed me.

For the longest time, this troper was relying on his Crystal Beast/Rainbow Deck alot when he was starting out Yugioh, until they later proved to be this trope due to his incompetence, then he learned about the wonderful world of SynchroMonsters and Stardust Dragon