In today’s episode of This Hits Different, Shelby Cassesse tells the story of Austin Milliner, who overcame the sudden loss of his father and an ACL injury with the help of his uncle and coach, Jake Trombetta.
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Austin Milliner had big goals for his senior year. He was poised to lead the Carlynton basketball team on a championship run. He expected the college recruitment process to heat up.
But life came to a halt at the end of his junior year when his father passed away suddenly.
“It was really hard because I was close to my father, sports wise,” Austin says. “He would always come to my games and stuff.”
Through grief, basketball was an escape, but only for a few weeks
He hurt his knee in a game last summer, but thought it was only minor. Scans a few months later found a torn ACL.
“That stretch of my life has been pretty hard,” he says. “I’ve been trying to overcome that.”
Austin credits his family with helping him through those months. It helped to have one of them nearby all day, every day.
Jake Trombetta is a math teacher and head basketball coach at Carlynton. He's also Austin's uncle.
“All winter, it’s six days a week spending time together,” Jake says. “I had him in class, in Algebra 2 his sophomore year, and trigonometry his junior year. So it’s just a bunch of time spent together.”
A relationship Austin doesn't take for granted.
“I’m very lucky to have someone like him because not a lot of people get to experience something like this,” he says.
So Austin, his mother, and Jake had long talks about what to do about Austin's injury. Get the surgery now and risk losing the entire season or wait.
“I was never really thinking that not playing was an option, because this is what we always talked about,” Austin says. “We were going to be seniors and play together and have so much fun.”
Austin started every game. He was limited physically, but when it came to his leadership, Jake says he never skipped a beat.
“He’d never make an excuse,” Jake says. “He’d still led by example, still be the vocal leader of our team. Still do everything that we asked of him, whether it was the toughest assignment or easiest assignment. Everyone on our team knew they could go to him.”
Qualities of a true leader.
And an approach Austin felt was important, even through tough times.
“Some people might not want to show up for practice, or just want to play in the games, or misbehave in school,” he says. “But I think it’s the right thing to do, to show up and be a good kid.”
Austin will still have an opportunity to play in college. He'll be a walk-on at Washington and Jefferson College.
But, with new beginnings ahead, a bittersweet feeling about what's coming to an end.
“To see him throughout this whole last six years and the kind of student, person and basketball player he is, it’s just going to kind of be —,” says Jake, too overcome with emotion to finish.
Though Jake and Austin will always be tight, the thought of all those early morning shootarounds and math classes - and the boy that became a man through them all - now a treasured memory.
“On the one side, it’s going to be difficult to fill it on our basketball team, because I don’t know if there’s been someone in our program like him in our program for a while,” Jake says. “Not basketball skill wise, but the kind of person and leader he is, it’s going to be really hard to fill those shoes.”