Personal Story: Love, Loss and Rekindled Passion

By Camila Vasquez Onorato

Sports have always played a crucial role in my life. From watching Formula 1 races on Sundays together as a family, to trying every sport in the world and to now hoping for a career in the sports industry. But the person who really introduced me to sports and helped me find a passion for it was my dad.

            My dad played basketball for most of his life, basketball was even the reason he moved to the United States. He used to play in the streets of Colombia until he was finally noticed by his high school. He played for his high school team and for the Colombia national team until colleges started to notice him and recruited him to the states. My grandma spent every cent to move him to New York. But his American dream quickly ended when he tore his ACL and never played the same sport again.

            Then life happened, he met my mom and they had me. And ever since I was born, he made sure that I would be passionate about sports just as much as he was. Of course, he wanted me to play basketball, but my mom was never going to let that happen. They signed me up in every sport, from tennis to horseback riding, and surprisingly I ended up choosing figure skating. Ironically, living in Miami who would have chosen figure skating as a sport? But my dad was just happy I chose something. He took me to every practice, bought me my first pair of skates and even though my parents were divorced he never missed a competition. He made sure I always had the best coaches and would even coach me when he knew I needed it.

            Even though I didn’t choose basketball, he still always wanted to share with me how much he loved the sport. Luckily, we lived in Miami during the time of the ‘big three.’ Watching LeBron, Wade and Bosh live is a memory I will never forget. That's the moment where I started to truly understand the sport my dad loved and ever since then we never missed a game. He would make sure the weekends we had together we could go to a game or watch it on TV. He would explain every little detail and make sure I always knew exactly what was going on. I loved it. It was our thing.

            Apart from basketball he wanted me to understand other sports and respect other athletes. Tennis was also very big in my household from both my dad’s and my mom’s side. All my cousins played tennis and one of them even went on to represent Venezuela in big tournaments. My dad loved that my whole family shared a passion for tennis and that it made us closer. He would try to take us to any tournaments or do anything he could so that we would keep enjoying that passion together. He would always try to take us to the Miami Open tennis tournament and till this day those are some of the best memories that my cousins and I share. Our biggest worry at the time was who was going to win against either Nadal or Federer.

            When it was time for me to go to college my mom wanted me to stay close to home but my dad pushed me into going to the University of Florida. He always wanted to live the American college experience of living in a dorm, going to football games, tailgates, everything. Unfortunately, he couldn’t, but he wanted us to share those experiences together. The moment I got my UF acceptance letter was probably one of the happiest days of his life. Followed by the day he helped me move. The second we arrived in Gainesville, Florida our first stop was the Stephen C. O’Connell Center to watch a basketball game. He was so excited we didn’t even stop at my apartment to drop off the boxes and luggage. 

            I started classes and of course took a sports journalism class my first semester. Every assignment I got he wanted to know what I was working on, if he could help and just wanted me to know that he was there. He was like a little kid, so interested and so curious. He always told me he would have loved to have a career in the sports industry but when he was young, he had to make a choice. Either follow his passion or pick something that could give him financial stability and security. He knew he wanted to be able to provide for his family one day and made it his goal to give me absolutely everything. And he did.

            Unfortunately, in my first semester at UF my dad passed unexpectedly, and nothing was ever the same for me. My love for sports died the moment I lost him. I stopped following sports like I used to, especially basketball. Before I could tell you about every player in every team now, I might be able to name you a few of the big ones. I started to believe that I wanted nothing to do with sports anymore. Fashion has always been another passion of mine and I just thought it would be easier if I pursued that. I didn’t have my dad which correlated directly with sports. Every time I would try to watch a game, flashbacks of memories would start going through my head and I would always feel a pit in my stomach. Of course, the dream of having a career in sports went down the drain as well and I felt something I had never felt before: fear. I was scared. I was scared that sports would always remind me of him and the pain that I felt when I lost him. I was scared that if I did try for a career in the sports industry I would fail.

But then time passed, and I realized that you can’t live in fear. I pushed myself into moving to Boston alone and pursuing a master’s degree. I'm now at a great program with great professors who believe in me and sometimes you just need that one person to push you and tell you that you can. Now there is nothing more that I want than a career in sports and I turned that fear into determination. I slowly realized that the passion and love my dad and I shared for sports will always be there and everything I do will be for both of us.