- April 24, 2024
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Coach Tony Benvenuto. Photos by Jeff Dawsey
Tony Benvenuto's daughter, Bella, currently starts as the Pirates' goal keeper. Photo by Jeff Dawsey
Benvenuto on the hand-me-down bicycle, with his sister, Lia, and his mother, Angela. Courtesy photo
A third-grade Tony Benvenuto. Courtesy photo
Matanzas girls soccer coach Tony Benvenuto has come, literally, a long way from the poor lifestyle he was accustomed to in Bari, Italy, as a child. During the week of Thanksgiving, Benvenuto takes a trip down memory lane to count his many blessings.
“I’m thankful I was given the opportunity to be in this country,” he said. “My family, my newfound faith and my job are what I’m most thankful for of all things, and I found all of that here in the states.”
From age 6 to 10, Benvenuto spent nine months out of the year at a lower-level boarding school because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him and his sister throughout the year. While there, he was often the victim of stealing and unreasonable searches for missing items. But, back at home, for three months, he would spend most of the day, as a kid, on the farm with his dad, who was a migrant farm worker.
Then, in 1960, when John F. Kennedy reopened the borders after World War II, Benvenuto’s dad set in order the process for his family to move to the states.
“The process took eight years,” Benvenuto said. “My father almost gave up on coming over, but he felt, to give us an advantage in life, the best thing was for us to come over.”
Then 15 years old, living in America but not able to speak any English, Benvenuto experienced early culture shock.
“I went from living on a farm without any neighbors to living on Long Island, New York, with houses one on top of another,” he said. “I went from a school with a couple hundred kids to a school with 1,000 kids.”
Soccer, though was one language in which Benvenuto was fluent, and he played in high school up to his senior year, when he injured his back. Not able to shoot for a soccer scholarship, he pursued an interpreter’s degree.
After graduating and not finding any work, he went into the food business, ultimately moving to Florida and running a pizza business for 16 years before selling it.
In those latter years, a couple of his children grew an interest in playing soccer in a local recreation league, and he knew they weren’t being coached properly, by volunteer parents. “That spurred the drive for me to coach and train kids how to play the game,” he said.
After coaching his boys’ youth teams, Benvenuto sought a position coaching older kids at the high school level, so he talked to Ken Seybold, who was the Matanzas athletics director at the time, and he told him that it would be easier for him to get a position coaching if he worked for the county.
“I asked him what the need was, and he told me they needed a foreign language teacher,” Benvenuto said. “I thought that was a blessing because, from the time I graduated college to actually using my degree was 25 years.”
Now, with four kids and Mary, his wife, Benvenuto has settled in the country and has found his niche, teaching and mentoring young adults through soccer, one of his first loves.
“First, I’m just thankful my parents waited out the process and didn’t take any shortcuts, so I was able to come here legally with a green card,” he said. “That allowed me and the rest of my siblings to have a good future.”
As an immigrant, Benvenuto believes he and other immigrants view this country a lot differently from those in today’s generation who never experienced such humble beginnings.
“There is an entitlement mentality, my kids included,” he said. “I see it in the students all day long. I feel that our country has changed, where we went from people working to get what they have to where our children feel that they’re entitled to get certain things because their parents work hard. Because I was told ‘no’ so many times, it tugs at my heart to say no to my kids. It’s hard because I was deprived of a lot of things, so it hurts me to deprive them of things. But, that’s just coming from an immigrant.”
Coach Benvenuto and the Matanzas Lady Pirates will next be in action at home against St. Augustine at 7:20 p.m. Monday, Dec. 7, at Matanzas.
