Interview video time stamps and topics:

2:49: The story of Verbo, how he got linked up with Immortals

7:22: Conflicts with his mom, friends not understanding the concept of esports

15:14: Verbo's thoughts on Lucio post-patch, life in a team house

19:03: Why Immortals declined their APEX invite

24:20: On the lack of LAN tournaments in Overwatch right now

30:07: Verbo on who needs to get buffed/nerfed in Overwatch

35:36: What it's like leading a team at 17 years old

40:48: Life on Immortals

Most 17-year-old boys worry about the same three things: girls, grades and getting a fake I.D.

For Stefano "Verbo" Disalvo, captain of Immortals’ Overwatch team, things are different. He’s more concerned with getting on the payload than getting in the club, there are no girlfriends allowed on his squad and his grades are just fine, at least when it comes to ‘Healing Done’ on the medal screen.

The Lucio main appeared on theScore esports Podcast Tuesday, raising the volume on his journey to becoming a professional Overwatch player before he was old enough to legally drink.

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That journey starts in an unlikely place: League of Legends. Before he had Overwatch in is sights, Verbo tried going pro in LoL. Hitting Masters on the NA server playing support (his favorite hero was Thresh), the young Canadian decided the competition at the highest level of play, the LCS, was just too cutthroat.

When he did jump ship to Overwatch, it went nowhere at first. “I’m going to be honest, nothing was happening I was getting no money, no results,” he said of his early days playing OW.

A major roadblock on his way to Overwatch fame and glory came, ironically, in his own skillset. Thriving as an in-game leader and communicator, Verbo’s leadership from the backlines isn’t as easy to Twitch clip as a headshot or clutch D.va boop.

“I was never known for my mechanics — what Lucio is known for their mechanics — I was known for my shotcalling and my communication,” he said. “That’s a lot harder to be recognized on stream for.”

Instead it was a slow climb to notoriety for Verbo, with his reputation as a leader spreading through pure word of mouth.

When word made it to Immortals, they asked Verbo for a VOD of his gameplay. It didn’t take them long to make a call. “They heard my communication and they were like, ‘OK, this is our guy,’” he said. After a two-week tryout, he didn’t just make the team, he was captaining it.

High school vs. Overwatch

So how, as a 17-year-old, do you balance 32 hours a week of high school, a social life and playing top level OW? You don’t. “I would wake up in the morning at 6 a.m., go to school until 3, come home, scrim until midnight. There was no time go out with friends, no time to even take a lunch break.”

To save his OW career, his grades and his sanity, Verbo starting taking all his courses online, where he can work at his own pace and isn’t required to physically be in a classroom for six hours a day.

“I couldn’t balance going to a traditional school and scrimming and doing the bootcamp and stuff like that, so I have to do it online,” he said.

That solved the academic problem, but his social life is still on the back burner in favor of pushing payloads and taking objectives.

“I only had one good friend that really understood where I was coming from” said Verbo. “When other people in my school found out what I was doing, they saw the article about me getting signed to Immortals, they were asking me: ‘What exactly are you doing?’ I basically told them I play games professionally.”

Most of his friends simply don’t understand. “It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around,” he said. “Going on stage, playing games in front of people. Like who’s going to go watch you play video games, right?”

And don’t even try asking him about his love life. Romantic relationships are off-limits on Verbo’s squad. Captain's orders.

“When I first made my team — this was back in February — I was super strict,” he said. “I was like, ‘Guys, I’m going to be real with you, if we’re going to actually go somewhere and we’re going to do something with this team — no girlfriends.’”

Girlfriends join soda on the ban list at Immortals’ team house in L.A., where the OW team bootcamped while the LoL squad was on a break.

Conflicts with his mother

Raised in a single parent household, Verbo’s mother went from his biggest opponent to his biggest supporter. Like any parent would be, she was more than a little skeptical about the education and career prospects playing video games would generate for her son.

In the beginning, she went to extremes to make sure Verbo was focusing on school work instead of schooling people in Quick Play.

“She would take the modem, and then take it with her to work. So there was no way of me getting back on the internet,” he said. When the modem was with his mom, or he was out of the house, Verbo found creative ways to improve his game.

“Whenever I actually couldn’t play on my PC, I would do anything I could to get better at the game. Whether that would be downloading pictures of the maps on my way back home from school, I would look at the map and look at my phone and basically just visualize: What’s a good way of attacking on Point A, or capturing the third phase of the map.”

Luckily for Verbo, the days of his mom packing the modem in her briefcase to work are long gone. Once she saw the contract from Immortals, and the salary, she understood. “It’s my job now,” he said. “She understands that.

"I’m actually so grateful for what she did because if I didn’t have those obstacles put in front of me, I wouldn’t have worked as hard as I did,” he said. “She wanted the best for me. It was a hard idea to wrap her head around, raising me on her own.”

Amped up for the future

With a successful high school career nearing its and end and his relationship with his mother better than ever, the future looks bright for Immortals’ young shotcaller. His post-secondary plans probably won’t shock you. It’s “full steam ahead with Overwatch, Immortals for sure," he said.

For the long-term though, he has dreams of teaching up-and-coming players the ropes. “I do have plans after to further myself into business,” he said. “I want to start my own LAN centre where I can teach aspiring pros how to get where I am right now.”

And if you are one of those aspiring pros, Verbo has one piece of advice: “Know your worth, know your value.”

Colin McNeil is a supervising editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.