Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
By Tom Archdeacon
He’s out of the “epicenter” of the COVID-19 virus in Italy and back here in the Dayton area, but he still doesn’t feel comfortable.
A.J. Pacher, once a basketball star at Wright State University and before that at Vandalia Butler High School, was the standout 6-foot-10 center of the pro team in Treviglio — Remer Blu Basket Treviglio — which is in the Lombardy region of northern Italy and is ground zero of the devastating coronavirus outbreak in the nation.
“It’s the epicenter,” Pacher said. “Our whole area was put in a red zone state of emergency. It went into total lockdown.”
As of Monday night, 1,407 of Italy’s 2,100 deaths from COVID-19 had happened in the Lombardy region. Of the 28,000 people diagnosed with the virus, over 15,000 were from that area. And by the time you read this, all these numbers will have jumped far higher.
Pacher said his first game was cancelled Feb. 23 and finally on March 9 it was announced the league would cancel games until at least April 3.
For several days, as the deadly news had begun to come out of Italy, Pacher said his parents back here had begged him to come home:
“They were freaking out, for sure. When everything started happening they were saying, ‘Just pack your stuff and come home. Come home!’
“I told them even though I’d like to, this was my job. I couldn’t just leave without permission. I had to get official word from the team first.”
- Read more in the Dayton Daily News
