STORRS, Conn. — A few years ago, UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma returned to his hometown of Montella, Italy, for the first time in years. He was on vacation elsewhere in the country, but a cousin reached out and invited him to a relative’s wedding. The ceremony, he discovered, would be in the same church where he attended kindergarten six decades earlier, so he decided to extend his trip an extra few days.
As a child, Auriemma walked to kindergarten every day, stopping at a field where locals had erected a basketball hoop and created a soccer field. Years later, Auriemma’s mother, Marsiella, often told how that was the first time he saw a basketball hoop.
On his trip six decades later, Auriemma retraced his footsteps from his childhood home to the church. He stopped at the field to take in the view. The basketball hoop and soccer field were long gone. There are more houses now — with running water and electricity, unlike his home as a boy. He’s the oldest living person in his immediate family, the last one who remembers this place clearly.
“We were living in poverty, but we didn’t know it was poverty,” Auriemma said. “As a kid, I thought, ‘Why do I need a telephone?’ No one had a telephone. ‘Why do I need money?’ Nobody had money. ‘Why…
