Then, in late January, he watched his dream of playing on the Overwatch League stage retreat from his grasp.

Just before the third season of the Overwatch League (OWL) began, O’Neill went to see the doctor during a visit back home. He’d been experiencing tightness in his chest, to the point that a 20-minute scrimmage would leave O’Neill out of breath. At first, he thought it might be asthma, or the stress of playing for the Eternal. After earning a spot in the OWL, you have to fight for it, as teams constantly retool rosters for the best chance to win the Grand Finals and the millions handed out in prize money each season.

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“The stakes are so much higher,” O’Neill said.

But, it wasn’t stress. O’Neill, 21, learned he had a heart problem. He needed surgery, and by the look on the doctor’s face, O’Neill could tell it was serious.

After a string of appointments, O’Neill had two surgeries in March. The day before he was set to be released, the doctors had more bad news. O’Neill had developed a fever and his lymph nodes were swollen. The doctors told him he had contracted the novel coronavirus and tested positive for covid-19.

O’Neill just remembers laughing at the news, thinking, “what have I done to deserve all this at once?”

O’Neill ended up spending close to two weeks recovering in the hospital. He never developed the notorious cough from covid-19, a great stroke of luck from his perspective, because the surgery left his chest split in two. (Doctors had to cut his sternum to perform the heart surgery.)

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“If I had a cough, I’d absolutely hate life,” O’Neill said.

There was a slight complication during the heart surgery and O’Neill ended up needing a pacemaker, as well. In O’Neill’s words his heart “ticks like a clock” now. In reflecting on it, O’Neill demonstrates one of the standout traits that his peers believe have defined him during his time with esports teams. Looking ahead at what he wants to do once recovered, he says he’s thinking of getting an assortment of clockwork gears tattooed on his chest.

“If you jumped in an elevator with me, you’d hear me tick every time it beats,” O’Neill said, almost brimming. He added he finds the whole thing fascinating, listing off facts like how the artificial valve in his chest will “last forever.”

“The only thing they have to change is my battery, which they have to change every 12 years,” he added. “It’s quite crazy what they can do now.”

The radiating positivity is a trademark of O’Neill’s personality, according to those who know him in the Overwatch League. The Philadelphia Fusion’s Christopher “ChrisTFer” Graham said O’Neill has a way of making light of a situation, whether it’s a bad scrimmage with a team or his bout of health problems this year. Graham has played with and coached O’Neill for three years now on the United Kingdom’s World Cup Overwatch team and describes him as “chaotic good,” and someone who never puts down a teammate.

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“He’s the exact type of player everybody wants to have on their teams,” Graham said. “He’s someone that literally doesn’t suffer from tilt or negative emotions.”

The “vast majority of people” wouldn’t be able to handle this string of bad luck as well as O’Neill, Graham believes. It’s an outlook O’Neill will rely upon as he looks to return to the league.

While he’s been away, the OWL has gone through its fair share of changes. Characters are randomly banned week-to-week in hero pools. The season is now online, after the league canceled planned homestand matches because of the pandemic. A new hero named Echo has arrived and she can fly around, raining fire down on her enemies. O’Neill does remember watching some of the first footage of Echo from the hospital in disbelief.

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“I was just sitting there, on my deathbed, and I’m like — why have they done this?” O’Neill told The Post with a laugh, adding that Echo may be a bit overpowered at the moment.

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O’Neill is still on the roster and receiving his salary for Paris Eternal as he continues his recovery. In a message to The Post, Paris Eternal’s general manager Kim “NineK” Beom-hoon said he’s looking forward for O’Neill to come back to the team. Beom-hoon wrote O’Neill has a great “energy” for the Eternal and is always “ready for everything.”

As for everything that’s happened, putting the brakes on his professional ambitions, O’Neill said it all “just feels unlucky." That aside, he’s glad he made the right call in January to stay home and discover why he had those chest problems. His symptoms only got worse closer to the surgery; it became harder to sleep and he’d wake up short of breath.

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“There was no point in risking it,” O’Neill said. “I’m just a little bit annoyed that [it happened] the one year I get a chance to turn up and play, travel and do all this.”

The doctors told him it will take a year for O’Neill to fully recover, but O’Neill said he can already tell the difference from before the surgery, not just physically but mentally. O’Neill feels clear-headed and said it’s far easier to focus. He’s ready to get started again doing what he enjoys: playing Overwatch. The plan now is to return in June and start training again.

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“I’m quite happy to carry on competing and trying even harder now,” O’Neill said. “I’ve got a good story line going for me now. Might as well not waste it, right?”