Diego Soarez spoke exclusively with Basquet Total after his time with the East Pearth Eagles of NBL 1 West basketball in Australia. The intern is now in Spain waiting for his future.
To begin, Soarez talked about his arrival at East Pearth Eagles and his experience in Australia, “I am very grateful to Lee Roberts who was the one who brought me here, it is the third team that I share with him after Aguada and Peñarol and the truth is that the experience was good. We came to the team for the last ten games of the regular season after several games where the team had lost several key pieces, which meant that the results were not what we wanted. When we arrived with Lee after finishing the League with Peñarol, those games were missing and we were far from the playoffs since we should have won all or at least nine of the games and we didn’t. Despite not having achieved the goal, I am still very happy because it was a very good experience to play in this League, which would be like the Metro. Here is the NBL which is the first division and NBL 1 is the second division of Australia that is divided into geographical regions and promotions are determined from there “.
About the East Pearth Eagles institution he commented, “It is a good club, a family style with leaders and volunteers who are always inside the club, giving everything at all times and making themselves feel very close to the players. They make you feel at home with them being part of the family, something that Lee also did with me since I stayed in his house with his family. Lee does short seasons and then comes here to play the longest season, he lives here and he made me feel like part of his family”.
After passing through Oceania, Soarez arrived in Spain, “Now I am at home a little calmer after my experience in Australia. There I had a little more protagonism, with more minutes on the court and where I did well in everything I played despite not being in the best condition, since in the finals of the League between Peñarol and Biguá I had a tear in the posterior and I did not get to be 100 percent. I was able to recover a bit in Uruguay, but I played the last final with discomfort in the hindquarters and then I had 14-20 days to finish recovering, spending a week in Uruguay and two weeks in Australia. In my first weeks in the NBL 1 West I could not do much, we lost two games and then those ten games that I mentioned before were missing, several important players had left us and that cost us in addition to the fact that I had a period of adaptation to the championship and the new colleagues, but in general it was a good experience where I had a greater role, which was something I needed”.
Regarding the club’s objectives, he commented, “We couldn’t reach the playoffs because of the number of games we had to win, but it was a good experience, we did as much as we could, but this experience allowed me to get to know a new country, a new culture, and that’s a very nice part, more so in Australia. Having played with Lee again, meeting her family and being part of her and her friends, that she has integrated me into everything like this is something that I am eternally grateful to and I am indebted to him even though he does it for the gift of good people who is”:
After a year of globetrotting, Soarez arrived in Spain where he has been living for some time, “Now I’m on vacation. I have lived in Spain since 2019 with my wife and daughter and after a year that I had left in September 2021 to play in Peñarol and then I returned home from Australia, this year was long for me due to all the amount of travel and others, that the truth is that I suffered a lot since we had made the decision in March of this year that this season I would have to play here in Spain or in some European country, I would not return to Uruguay. Today the idea is to rest from trips at least this season, play close to home and if you have to travel it should not be more than three or four hours, so that both my wife and my daughter can travel little and be with me on weekends, being close is the most important thing. Now I’m on vacation for a bit and I’m going to take a few days, since it was a long season of more than a year and then we’ll see what the future holds”.
To conclude, Soarez commented“We are enjoying the family, I want to thank you for covering the games, for being present being the only ones who really did it. He sent a big hug and wished them the best and at some point it would be nice to wear the colors of Athens again, which I hope will be before my career is over.”
