Humility, effort and perseverance. Always applying those maxims, David Corrales has been overcoming obstacles with admirable strength and determination. Without noise, with hardly any media attention, the man from Zaragoza is forging an exemplary career, of much merit, in the academic and sports fields: he plays basketball at the University of Hobart, in the prestigious NCAA, while he is studying Mathematics and computer engineering.
“He’s a fighter,” warns his father, Álvaro Corrales, who recalls that David, from the very beginning, had to overcome a significant handicap: “Since he started playing basketball, he was always the shortest on his team, and by far”; a lack that he has been able to supply “with a lot of sacrifice and tenacity”, and an inexorable faith in his own possibilities. “He is now 1.78 meters tall, which is a great inconvenience to become a professional player,” admits his father.
David, in this sense, has never given in to discouragement. And he vindicated himself yesterday with a high exhibition against Clarkson University (89-70), claiming a greater role for the final stretch of the season. The 20-year-old point guard led Hobart’s victory with a superb offensive display: he scored 19 points in 17 minutes of play, shooting 83% from the perimeter – he converted 5 of his 6 triple shots. “For me it was just another game. I left happy with my performance, but above all with the victory”, confesses the Aragonese player, who recalls that basketball “is a team sport”, so the team must always be “for above individualities. In Hobart’s squad, made up of up to 18 players, David is the only foreigner.
The man from Zaragoza began his training in the Helios basketball teams. At the age of 13, when he was a child, he joined the lower categories of Casademont Zaragoza, where he stayed for five seasons. There he shared a dressing room with renowned players such as Carlos Alocén, Vit Krejci, Jaime Fernández, Jaime Pradilla, Javi García and Raúl Lobaco. Until, in the summer of 2019, he chose the American dream. “The experience is turning out to be very positive in every way. Not only because I can combine my studies with basketball, but also because it is giving me many other values. For example, it is clear that I have grown in maturity and that now I am just another person. independently,” says David, who is in his third year in the United States.
His father, Álvaro, is one of the four partners of AGM Sport, an Aragonese company specializing in facilitating student access to scholarships – sports, academic and international – awarded each year by universities in the United States. It was he who opened the doors to this exciting adventure. “At first, I was not convinced at all because the change is very big. It is about another country, another language, another culture… However, in the end I decided to try my luck and I made, without a doubt, the right decision “, confesses the Aragonese player.
“Everything is different there -explains the man from Zaragoza-. The classrooms are small, with very few students, which favors closeness with the teacher. And they are not particularly intensive schedules: I go to class from Monday to Friday, three hours a day” , says David, who later dedicates to basketball “six days a week”between training sessions and matches, with work sessions that, “depending on the physical load used”, cover “two to three hours” per day.
What memories do you keep of your formative stage in Aragón? “Both at Helios, where I started when I was seven years old, and at Casademont Zaragoza, where I was until I was 18, they taught me a lot in all aspects. Not only did they allow me to progress as a player, but they also helped me grow as a person” , indicates the base. In addition to David, seven other Aragonese basketball players also went to the United States, in recent years, to combine the sport with studies at the University. They are Jorge Lázaro, Jorge Latapia, Alejandra Mastral, Elena Aznar, Marina Cenís, Inés Latapia and Candela Lascorz.
