The young basketball player who faced cancer from faith and prays to Our Lady in every game

Since she was a child, the Uruguayan Joaquina Rodrigo knew two things: what God should always be present in his life and that, in addition, he wanted to dedicate himself entirely to basketball. At the age of six he was already playing in a sports school and today, at twenty, he aspires to participate in the major international leagues.

Interviewed for the Catholic Church of Montevideo, has highlighted a victory over any other on the field: kept the faith for seven months fighting cancer.

Faith, always present in your family

Joaquina grew up in a Catholic family of entrepreneurs with his fourteen-year-old brother in the Uruguayan city of Young. He comments that “they are people of faith”, which he accredits with the schools they chose for their formation.

“At the San Vicente de Paúl school I received a human and Christian formation. I attended the last years of high school at Santa Luisa de Marillac in Montevideo, and faith was always present in my house”.

“Basketball woke up everything in me”

At the age of six, Joaquina he discovered what would be his great passion throughout his life.

I started playing basketball at a Young school. Woke up everything in me”. He began playing in local teams and today he is the base of a prestigious Uruguayan national team. “I started traveling to travel every weekend. I played in the Cordón, Malvín and Goes clubs; at the moment I’m in Hebraica Maccabi”.

Joaquina Rodrigo, basketball player.

During his adolescence, cancer caused a deep personal and faith crisis for Joaquina, which led him to consider how to strengthen his faith and help others.

The serious crisis during cancer: “God, what am I doing wrong?”

Between games, his sister noticed that Joaquina had a swollen neck. “We thought it was a contracture from a bad movement, but I put ice on it and it had nothing to do with it.”

The basketball player claims that the following months involved a serious personal and faith crisis. The diagnosis was definitive: Hodking lymphoma. “I was diagnosed with cancer, I was undergoing chemotherapy and I asked myself: ‘why me?’ It was a breaking moment,” he says.

From the studies to the treatment to the biopsy, Joaquina spent seven months in the Pérez Scremini Foundation where he fought not only for keep your spirits and hope, also your faith. “I did not understand it, I am an athlete, I ate well, I had a healthy life and a family … I asked god what was he doing wrong to go through that. “

Learned from children’s smiles

“I had doubts, I refused, but later I realized that it was not worth it.” After a while, the young patient was impacted by the children who entered the foundation every day without knowing if they would come out alive and despite it, they always smiled. She, however, “knew she was going to get out of that one.”

“In the life you have to persevere and fight, not alone, but with God, family and friends… It took me a long time to understand and accept it, but I was finding the meaning ”.

That time of fear and insecurity allowed the young woman to come out stronger. “God tests you, and you understand it over time. I understood that God does not allow himself to be won in generosity”.

Thanks to her stay at the Foundation, while thinking about the recovery of the children around her, He learned about his vocational career and today he is studying second year of Physiotherapy. “I wanted to get involved in something related to health, and I am more convinced that God showed me”.

His mission, to help others and to strengthen the relationship between faith and basketball

For three years, Joaquina has been discharged, and only returns to the foundation for routine check-ups for six months. It is totally focused on her life of faith and strengthening the ties between God and sport.

In basketball “I see how God demands of me in his friendship with Him, in persevering in it and in fidelity. I see my littleness, I struggle to be and look more like Jesus every day, and this relationship strengthens everything I do: God it’s in all my things“, it states.

Technology has helped me meet God. I have my routine, my morning and afternoon prayer times, ”explains the student, who lives in a university residence in Montevideo. “We have an oratory, masses and many activities related to the spiritual life.”

Catholic basketball player Joaquina Rodrigo.

Joaquina has made being an athlete and a Catholic her great goal in life, and she prays to the Trinity and the Virgin before each game.

When Joaquina leaves the residence hall and enters the field, she states that not easy to maintain consistency of life. “You know that the others don’t think the same. I try to see how to influence and that they see God in some way. We have had talks about the existence of God, and in my team they know that I have faith, that I am a believer and a Catholic ”.

Note that although some go to Catholic schools, many of them do not practice their faith. “It is important to me that these questions are prompted by them. I do not lose hope that one of them will convert. I pray before each game to the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary”.

Meanwhile, he does not lose hope either in sports, or in his life of faith or health. At twenty years old and 1.65 meters, “I aspire to continue growing and make the leap in sports and academics,” he explains, thinking about the United States or Europe, without losing sight of the pillar of his life. “It’s about putting love in everything you do. That way it becomes extraordinary”, He concludes.

Joaquina Rodrigo, in some of his best plays at Hebraica Macabi in Uruguay.