NY.- The Dominican Bayron Matos, who is part of the ‘International Player Pathway’ program, stated this Sunday that he dreams of putting his country and Latin America in the NFL.
“Taking my country to the NFL is a dream that little by little is coming true. It motivates me every day, but it goes beyond my country, it is throughout Latin America that would be a great pride to play in the NFL,” Matos assured EFE.
Born in the neighborhood of Los Mina, Santo Domingo, He is the only Latin American player among the 15 that make up the 2024 generation of the ‘International Player Pathway’, talents outside the United States, who will seek to make a place among the 32 NFL teams. Matos is 23 years old, is 2.06 meters tall and weighs 131 kilos.
Like many of his compatriots, he was born with a ball and a baseball glove under his pillow.
In his adolescence, he abused every batter who came in front of him with a 95 mile per hour fastball to the joy of his mother, who wanted to see him succeed as a baseball player. “Everyone saw me as a ball player, but not me. I did it for my mom, because she liked it and it made her happy and I wanted to make her happy.
But it was not my goal to be a baseball player even though I was very good,” he recalled with a deep and powerful voice.
In the small family house where Bayron lived his childhood, his mother slept on the bottom bunk; He did it with his brother on the top one, which he had to leave because he grew too big and his feet were hanging off the edge. As his feet overflowed the bunk, his dream of emigrating to the United States overwhelmed him.
I wanted to play basketball, see the Tennessee Titans live, live an American-style Christmas. “Going to the United States and having my own bed was incredible. Live Christmas here as I saw it on television. I like gifts under the tree on Thanksgiving Day. “It has been an incredible journey that is just beginning,” she commented.
The boy moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, at age 16 to play basketball at Hamilton Heights Christian Academy. His talent led him to study in New Mexico thanks to a scholarship, and to be recruited to play for the University of South Florida (USF) in 2021.
“I loved basketball; I could use my physique, go into the match hard, but they called a foul on me. I felt like I was missing something, more adrenaline. I watched American football, I didn’t fully understand it, but that wasn’t an obstacle, because when I set my mind to something I do it.
“The sky is the limit,” he noted. And she fulfilled it.
In 2022 he was already in the USF football program. “Here they don’t call you foul. In American football, as we Dominicans say ‘I was in my waters.’ That part where you can crash hard, that filled me. The first time I played, when I put on the helmet, the shoulder pads, I understood the rules; It was incredible,” he added.
It is difficult to imagine his gigantic figure flooded with tears, but it happened when a few months ago he received the news that he would be part of the ‘International Player Pathway 2024’ program to reach the NFL.
“It was crazy when they told me, I started crying because I know that with this opportunity my dream is getting closer,” he highlighted. A dream that will only be complete if he can get his mother and grandmother to travel to the United States the day he debuts in the league.
“My mother doesn’t understand American football, but she always told me that I had to be happy and to choose the path to be happy.
She knows there are no obstacles for me. “My mother and my grandmother are the people who have influenced me the most,” he explained. Despite the ideal that this giant with an indelible smile lives by, he does not forget his status as an immigrant. “I know what it feels like to arrive in a strange country.
When you emigrate it becomes difficult to adapt because we feel like we don’t belong. “I do this to inspire more Latinos, so that they see that someone of us came here without knowing English, with another culture and has been able to play American football and hopefully the NFL, that is my dream,”
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2024-03-17 17:00:12
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