[Sports] Creole basketball says goodbye to Leonardo Rodríguez

[G h o s t l y.]

Leonardo Rodríguez, Mr. Basketball, never seemed to be overwhelmed by a desk full of folders with pending tasks and unresolved issues. He would pay due attention to all of them, only to immediately add an outline of some new idea, a book outline, some notes for his next column. Before evening, barely a trace of dust remained on his work table.
 

There is time in life for everything, he used to say.

This Saturday, when he exhaled his last breath, we recall all the fruitfulness that this man made of his vital time, with the impetus and discipline that characterized him, and the passion and humor with which he embraced every commitment and undertaking that he undertook and assumed. .

And it is that this son of the deep Guárico did not stop conjugating the verbs to do and to build since the flame of his early years threw him fully into sport, where he found fertile ground for his dreams. In that field, still a fledgling, he stood out as a basketball and table tennis player, but also a soccer player, defending in these sports the colors of his beloved Guárico and, later, of the country, as a goalkeeper for La Vinotinto and Deportivo Italia in the professional circuit. Until he decided to study and became a physical education professor at the Caracas Pedagogical School in 65, and an economist at the UCV in 1968.

It would be his Master's degree at Stanford University in 1973 that would mark him with fire. Restless as he was, along with his studies at such a prestigious university, he set out to change Venezuelan basketball. Thus he conceived the idea of forming a competition focused on the show, and when he returned to Venezuela at the end of 1973 he dedicated himself entirely to materializing a project that would end up revolutionizing the whole of sport: the Special Basketball League.

His vision had a telluric effect. The new management model promoted by Leonardo Rodríguez led to basketball being embraced by the youth, making the sport one of the most po[CENSORED]r since its early years. Not only did it give it shape, content and organization, it also provided it with a showcase, radio and television, in which it became also, wherever basketball was, its image and its voice. Almost in his soul.

Hence, each basketball triumph, each jump between two, almost bears his mark.

But it was never enough for Leo. Parallel to this intense activity, he also ventured into print journalism, with collaborations in Sport Gráfico, El Nacional, El Mundo and Meridiano. And he did not stop his studies, graduating as a Social Communicator in 1986. And he did not stop teaching regular classes at the Pedagogical University (1966-1995), where he founded the Chair of Education Technology, as well as at the UCV and in two postgraduate courses. in the Simón Bolívar and the Santa María.

For Leonardo Rodríguez, time was not a metaphor but a resource, which he administered with rigorous efficiency. So much so that he accompanied all of the above with two positions in public and private institutions, such as the direction of the National Sports Institute, the sports coordination of the Experimental Libertador Pedagogical University, the Secretariat of the Venezuelan Olympic Committee; the treasury of the Federation of Sports Journalists of America, or the presidencies of the Venezuelan Basketball Federation, the South American Basketball Technical Commission, the Venezuelan Gymnastics Federation, or the Circle of Sports Journalists of Venezuela. And one cannot fail to mention the production of five books, one of them a must-see: Venezuela in a Ball, on the history of national basketball.

By late afternoon, with all the folders, notes, photos, newspaper clippings, notes and projects meticulously filed away, there was time to read the evening El Mundo and take a short nap, and then go out fresh to the basketball game at 7 : 30 at night to continue with work.

How much energy there was in a single being, in which fiery passion coexisted with pragmatism and serenity. "We are going to look for solutions to problems, let's not look for problems to solutions," he sentenced when a discussion became entangled.

A conciliatory Leonardo, when he played, a staunch defender of his principles and ideas, always. A builder and a filmmaker, like few sports leaders of the Venezuelan twentieth century. Perhaps along with who was one of his mentors, his example, Don José Beracasa. One that did nothing much for the country's physical activity, an effort that in justice enthroned him in 2010 in the Hall of Fame of Venezuelan Sports, of the Circle of Sports Journalists, and that made him worthy of the title “Benemérito del Baloncesto Suramericano, awarded in 2006 by the South American Basketball Confederation, Consubasquet.

On Saturday, the time of the exemplary and unquestionable life and material work of Leonardo Rodríguez ended. The basketball that cries for him today will keep his legacy in mind and will always remember him with his most emblematic and poetic phrase: "Ball in the air, hopes to heaven!"

Because to remember a dear father and loyal friend, always, but there will always be time.