An "BalIs" Van Le started playing League of Legends during the beta along with his friends and cousin, Dang Le, known ingame as Professor Rice. Prior to playing League of Legends, he had played Runescape, Maplestory, and other casual online games, but once Season 1 began, he started playing ranked games and quickly climbed the Elo ladder. He achieved an Elo of 2252 during that season playing mainly  Ezreal and  Corki. Eventually, Balls started playing weekly Go4LoL tournaments and got a taste of the competitive scene.

League of Legends Career

After a few unsuccessful tournaments, Balls was introduced to mandatorycloud, Atlanta, LemonGoD, and wallstop, and they formed the team APictureOfAGoose, where Balls switched between AD Carry and toplane. The team qualified for IEM Kiev but were unable to attend due to external commitments[1]. The roster was later picked up bymTw.NA and soon transferred once again to Monomaniac Ferus. When AD player Aphromoo joined mTw.NA in August 2012, Balls switched to top lane.

In October 2012 Balls left mMe Ferus to focus on school, but in December of the same year he was picked up for the AD carry position of Meat Playground just before the NA LCS Season 3 qualifiers. When the team failed to qualify, they disbanded, leaving Balls a free agent. He was picked up by Quantic Gaming as their toplaner in April, and on May 2013, they qualified for thesummer split. After qualifying, the current Quantic roster reformed as Cloud 9. Balls has played for Cloud 9 since, winning two splits of the NA LCS, taking second place in the 2014 Summer Split, and qualifying for and playing in two World Championships.

Balls is widely recognized as one of the best toplaners in North America and is known in particular for his  Rumble play.

Cloud 9 was the North American team fan-voted to IEM San Jose.[2] They defeated paiN Gaming 2-0, Alliance 2-1, and then Unicorns of Love 3-0 to win the tournament.

Due to their IEM San Jose victory, Cloud9 qualified for IEM Katowice in March. They lost their only two games, first to GE Tigers and then to yoe Flash Wolves, and finished in 7th/8th place. Domestically, they underperformed at the start of the season, and were in 8th place at the end of the second week of the spring LCS split. However, they improved over the course of the season, ending with a second-place finish behind Team SoloMid and a playoff bye; after beating Team Liquid 3-2, Cloud9 lost to TSM 1-3 in the finals and finished the split overall in second place.

Cloud9 replaced mid laner Hai with Incarnati0n at the start of the Summer Split due to Hai's retirement. They performed poorly for the first five weeks of the split and replaced Meteos with Hai going into the sixth week. With Hai back on the team, Cloud9's record improved from 3-7 to 6-12 by the end of the split, and they finished in 7th place after a tie-breaker victory against Team 8, narrowly avoidingrelegations and retaining their Championship Points, though they did not qualify for playoffs. In the Regional Finals Gauntlet, Cloud9 reverse-swept both Gravity Gaming and Team Impulse before beatingTeam Liquid 3-1 in the finals. Their fourteen games played over the course of three days gave them North America's third seed to the 2015 Season World Championship, Cloud9's third-consecutive Worlds.

Considered an underdog at Worlds, Cloud9 were placed into Group B along with Fnatic, ahq, and Invictus Gaming and expected to place last. Balls's soloqueue performance in Korea was especially called into question, as he was demoted from Diamond I to Diamond II multiple times during the team's bootcamp in Korea. Instead, Cloud9 surprised with an undefeated 3-0 first week, with Balls suddenly picking up Darius. In the second week, Cloud9 needed only one win to advance to the quarterfinals but were unable to find it, losing four games in a row including a tiebreaker loss to ahq. They placed third in their group, ahead of only Invictus Gaming.