By Nicole Rankow
HurricaneSports.com
It’s September 15, 1992. An ethnically rooted war in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been escalating over the last four months. It’s also Aljosa Piric‘s 15th birthday.
He is having a small gathering with a few friends and his family, in the basement of his home, because outside, there is threat of sniper fire, grenades and brutal attacks being executed by neighbors who are now soldiers in a civil war. The tennis courts were turning to graveyards, and the only way out for a young Piric was through tennis.
Two days later, Piric’s dad told him he would be leaving the country. He didn’t know where he would go or how long he will be gone for. Four days later, on September 19th, Piric is boarding a bus and saying goodbye to his parents and his home. “Before I had kids, I didn’t really understand how big a decision that was. Now as a dad, as a father, to put my son on a bus and just have him leave and not know where he’s going, I don’t know how to do that. I really don’t.” Piric said.
The heaviness of that day and the journey that brought Piric from Bosnia to Miami, is one that is echoed in his own words, when asked about the solitary nature of the game that got him here.
“Tennis is a sport that you need to develop tough skin and emotional stability, for sure. Because you’re the one out there, who is winning, who’s losing. If you lose, it’s you …
“People that can cope with adversity and things, they turn out to be better players than the kids that cannot. And that’s the differentiator for becoming really good at this game.”
At just 15, Piric was alone, he had a few friends, but no family or familiarity left to speak of.
His escape was part of the humanitarian effort coordinated by the Bosnian and U.S. Olympic Committees; a program called “Save the Athletes of Bosnia.” He played tennis in Croatia, then was moved to Italy, and ultimately landed in the United States a year later.
When asked about the journey, Piric recounted that “the first three months were kind of fun because I was hanging out with my friends. And then it hit me a couple of months in, I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t get to see my parents.” And then when I went to Italy, and it hit me more. And then when I came to the States, it was a culture shock, for sure. It was a little bit numbing. You just kind of took everything that came, and it was what it was.”
Piric was 16 when he arrived in Tampa, Fla., at the Palmer Tennis Academy, where he was paired up with a young man from Monterrey, Mexico, named Jorge Melomuskis. They were roommates and became friends during the six or seven months that Piric was in Tampa. “[H]e was a guy, yeah, a boy really, but he was a guy who kind of mentored me through that period,” Piric recounted with a smile, not having said that name in many years, “he took me under his wing.”
Piric and Melomuskis would watch MTV after playing tennis all day. It was 1993, MTV was in its prime with shows like The Real World, MTV Spring Break, Unplugged, and videos by bands like R.E.M and Nirvana. “So, literally, we would watch MTV Spring Break and music videos and I was learning English through that and this guy Jorge, who was helping me. It was a way out, just kind of like see something different and just block out everything else out that was going on in my life at that time.”
After Tampa, Piric was relocated once again, where he moved in with Peggy and Dave Thorne, a host family in Richmond, Va. The Thornes were familiar with the world of competitive tennis, as parents to Kenny Thorne, who was, at the time competing at the professional level.
There is something ritualistic in the concept of finding your tribe, the people who you identify with, that make you feel safe. For Piric, that rite of passage began in Richmond. “Probably about a year in, my life changed. I mean, I became a Christian there. So, that was a huge moment in my life, really. And that’s kind of when I settled in and really became more grounded in what was happening and understood things a little bit more.”