Mourning in basketball | Tijuana News

In burst sport there is a before and after of the Tijuana Dragons, who at the end of the 70’s were champions of the Superior Basketball Circuit, winning the final against Panteras de Aguascalientes.

Before the CSB, the Primera Fuerza was the best in Tijuana basketball, with full houses in the municipal tournaments and leaving people outside the Municipal Auditorium in the grips that the local quintets had with the Mexicali team.

What’s more, student classics, ETI with the Police and the Regional Technological Institute, as the house of the Greyhounds and Cimarrones of the Autonomous University of Baja California used to be called, caused large entrances in the better half of Agua Caliente Boulevard.

Tijuana fans, demanding and knowledgeable, stopped following the local basketball, since the Dragons and teams that visited them, set the bar very high.

There was an element that managed to raise First Force basketball a little, René Gutiérrez Inzunza, who passed away last week.

By the way, René’s remains will be veiled on Saturday night at a funeral home on Boulevard Fundadores and on Monday a mass will be held at the Church of San Francisco de Asís, in the downtown area, in front of Parque Teniente Guerrero.

René boosted basketball as sponsor and manager and people began to return to the stage.

He sponsored the René’s Tuxedos team, a business he owned, which was next to a market on Boulevard Cuauhtémoc, he was also at Sánchez Taboada, where the gastronomic area is now, and then at Avenida Niños Héroes, in the city ​​center.

A friend of the press, René offered a discount to the founders of the Association of Sports Journalists of Tijuana, although we did not have to pay anything for the tacuche, which we wore at the APDT presentation at the Chamber of Commerce.

The APDT was a good project, which collapsed when some saw it as a business and they didn’t even tickle the Circle of Sports Writers of Tijuana, which still barely survives. Gutiérrez Inzunza was president of the Municipal Basketball Committee of Tijuana and in his leadership he revived the rivalry between Tijuana and Mexicali for the highest category state honors.

René put the kilos on him when it came to basketball and I remember that one time we accompanied him to Mexicali, together with Manolo León, also who is no longer in this world, for the gym scoreboard, for one of the state First Force.

Several years it promoted a state team event, the Monte de Piedad Cup, with a level, we consider, superior to that of the Pacific Coast Basketball Circuit, the Cibacopa, in which the Tijuana Zonkeys have been crowned in three editions.

René forgot basketball, he worked for the Ministry of Health and was administrator of the Tijuana Auditorium, in the year in which there was a substitute for Xicoténcatl Leyva Mortera and he allowed us to be part of his team.

After that, we rarely saw him, but he never forgot to congratulate us on our birthdays, by face, which is how he is used to now. Lately we only saw him in photos that were published on the Friendship Fridays face, an event in which a group of friends get together, for the simple pleasure of doing it and living together, but they will surely miss him.

It only remains for us to wish that René rests in peace and that resignation soon reaches the hearts of his relatives.

There is no longer room for the Notes, which have reached this far…for today and remember that although the authorities no longer require the use of face masks and antibacterial gel, you decide, as well as keep a healthy distance.