Let me tell you a quick story about this guy, we’ll call him “Ovi.” He was that token chubby, funny kid everybody laughed with, but usually at, when you were in high school. This kid had a tremendous love for sports, but he was fat, weak and slow, just not a good athlete. Ovi was born and raised playing baseball in Venezuela, a country where baseball rules, but he still made sure to try his luck at other sports, from tennis to rugby to martial arts.

His senior year, after many failed attempts, Ovi finally managed to lose weight through what at the time seemed like a rigorous diet and exercise program, but in reality was just an uneducated adventure. With 40 pounds less on his six-foot frame, he still wasn’t a super-star athlete, but at least Ovi would not go to prom as the chubby guy.

Now, as a 17-year-old, he decided the next step for him would be to attend college in the United States and play collegiate sports. A crazy thought, considering he still had to work on his English and well…the whole moving-to-a-different-country deal.

Around the same time, through one of those crazy turns in life, he fell in love with a sport relatively new to him and virtually non-existent in Venezuela. A sport that seemed exciting and just straight-up awesome; it was football.

Just from watching it on TV, Ovi was officially hooked.

He realized that if he wanted to play college football, he would have to get bigger and stronger, like those guys hitting each other on TV. After applying to his training much reading and researching on everything he could find on nutrition and performance training, he started to get bigger and stronger. The time to leave had arrive, and Coffeyville Community College would be his first stop in the US before arriving to Washburn.

You have probably realized by now that Ovidio is actually me, that is, before I got to Coffeyville and a teammate and good friend from Winfield, Kan., baptized me as “Vinny,” from “Vinnyzuela.” Good call, Pat, the name stuck!

Fast forward five years, and after barely getting a taste of the game, my time expired. I no longer play college ball, but with the knowledge acquired from both being on the books and the trenches, I am able to do the next best thing, I provide nutritional and training advise to those wanting to get stronger, jump higher and run faster.