When Hurricane Iota devastated the Atlantic coasts and islands, Eduart Steele lost all communication with his sister, who lived in Providencia. He did not know about her, nor about her family. And the anguish of having lost her made him travel to look for her. He, who in addition to being a professional basketball player is a firefighter in San Andrés, left in a boat with his other companions to the island of the Caribbean Sea two days after the tragedy occurred.
Mire: The best of Colombian basketball can be found in El Espectador
Upon arrival, his first feeling was desolation. The emptiness that leaves the anguish of remembering what is no longer seen, as if it had never existed. “It looked like a desert, as if we had reached another place. Everything was dead. There was nothing left of what was there before, ”says Steele. Beautiful fortune: his sister was alive, a luck that many did not have. The house disappeared, the storm carried it away. That’s where the rebuilding began. First with yours and then with others. Twenty days uninterrupted, from six in the morning to six in the afternoon. Making shelters with precarious walls and roofs, using the materials that were available, and helping the people who had remained under the foundations of the houses. Or at least the ones that survived. And in the midst of the chaos, one of the images that Steele remembers most from those days is the total darkness at night while the lanterns shone like little dots in the void, as if they were fireflies looking for a halo of hope.
Steele’s life is balanced between his two professions: firefighter and basketball player. Behind each one is the engine and the great passion of her life: collaborating with others.
He discovered his motive from a young age, when in basketball he found a deep love. Not because she liked to watch or follow him, but because she was passionate about playing with her friends and hanging out with others. For this reason, he was also a footballer and volleyball player, because being with the others he felt more complete, truly him.
Steele also became a semi-professional baseball player, but he played more because it was in his blood than because he liked it. His father, Ernesto Steele, was a baseball legend in Colombia and is remembered as a hero in San Andrés. However, although Eduart tried to follow that path, he never aroused the same passion as other sports, in which he felt more connected with others.
Do not miss: Braian Angola: life beyond the Llanos
Basketball was that love that arose in the streets of San Andrés, where the orange ball is mistress and queen. For the islanders, the bounce of the ball, the hoop and the board are landscapes of childhood. And amidst the bumps in the streets, the rubs, the nudges and the baskets, Eduart Steele forged his hope of becoming a professional.
That is why it treasures the December tournaments, which are organized on the island and are one of the most important amateur basketball competitions in the country. “Those are difficult, you cannot bring as much reinforcement as in the league and they are very physical tournaments,” he alleges. Without so much rule, with more neighborhood.
That’s where Steele and several of his teammates come from on the payroll that got Caribbean Storm Islands into the semi-finals of the Professional League. Back in 2007, when they were just beginning their careers and many of them went to the interior of the country to study at the university, among several friends they formed a team, the “December Team”, to participate in the end of the year tournament in Saint Andrew. Steele says that, in addition to him, there were five other Caribbean payroll in that litter: Luis Almanza, Michael Jackson, William Cabeza, Jorry Downs and Jody Timothy Corpus.
Plus: Luis Almanza: “In San Andrés, basketball is sacred”
For this reason, the residents of San Andres enjoy the local team, because they are the home team and because Caribbean awakens a feeling of attachment and emotion throughout the island. Steele feels it in the street, when people greet him and ask him when they are going to let them enter the coliseum to support the team.
Steele comes from town. And play and work for them. Of the dozens of stories his last twelve years as a firefighter and basketball player have left him, without a doubt, the one he remembers most was the time the garbage landfill caught fire. He with his companions, and several firefighters that they brought from Bogotá, spent almost twenty days putting out the fire. Remember that the day they finished he was looking for some peace. He breathed in and felt the joy that teamwork brings him. He treasures that moment because of the difficulty of the challenge, behind which his spirit of sacrifice hides. That motivates him and makes him love basketball and also his island, to which he wants to give the title of the second semester of the professional league.
Too: Hansel Atencia: Playing in the key of three
.
