Mario was like that. We knew each other when we were very young, in shorts, when one afternoon my father, who really liked this sport, deposited me on the brick dust basketball court at the Club Regatas Resistencia. There, on the banks of the Negro River on Avalos Avenue.
The bottom of the Club, behind the tennis courts, was that first redoubt where other boys were already running around who would later leave us unforgettable sporting moments. And so we formed the Children’s team of the rowing entity together with Carlitos Altamirano, Osvaldo and Eduardo ‘Neco’ Pérez, the ‘cat Rubén Guillén, the ‘Chanca’ Garay, and many others. Don Víctor Romero, a glory of our basketball wearing the Villa San Martín jacket, was our coach.
But the Romeros also – ‘Marionca’ had her sisters Adela and Graciela – lived right next to that game rectangle in a modest little house under those ancient eucalyptus trees. It was the house of the ‘canchero’. A cozy home where, for example, the radio was taken outside so that we could listen to the game that Sarmiento and For Ever were playing, at a time when the city stopped for the classic soccer game. Thus, the family landscape was completed with the wire clotheslines where the T-shirts that Doña Adela washed and prepared for each weekend were dried.
Already ‘Marionca’ showed the genes of a player gifted to handle the ball and play from the base of the team. We grew up, other areas and moments in our lives came, but with him we remain united in sport and the pride of having shared that childhood with balls hitting the tiles, or catching the leather one under the three sticks. We were both goalkeepers in soccer, in a position that united us every time we met in the street or on a field.
Seeing him be the “carrying” captain and champion with that youth team that brought the first basketball team title to the province in 1967, made us even closer in the affection that we always had. He enjoying his consecration, I the admiration he felt.
In social networks, his friend and brother-in-law, Nino Airala, fired him remembering that step in the teams of the Chaqueña de Fútbol League. Unión de Villa Perrando – the neighborhood club where he grew up -, Vélez Sársfield, Villa Alvear, Independiente Tirol where he was champion, and again with the ‘blues’. And always marking presence and safety with his agile image of a huge athlete.
We saw very little of each other in the last twenty years, but every time we met there was no shortage of hugs and thousands of anecdotes that immersed us in those years of childhood and adolescence.
Today, we mourn his departure. With pain and resignation we remember this remarkable colleague who in his passage through this life left us a clear mark of commitment and loyalty in each sporting act that he had to star in.
He passed away at the age of 72 and we bid him farewell with the honor and eternal memory of having shared our lives.
Rodolfo ‘Pocholo’ Mancuello
