Column

From The Daily News of Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2007 . . .

Jim Camazzola is afraid . . . afraid that five seconds from Thursday night
are seared in his memory bank forever.
Camazzola, a 43-year-old from Vancouver, is in his first season as head
coach of the Asiago Lions in the Italian Serie A. He had played for Asiago
in the early 1990s, but had retired and was at home in Vancouver this summer
when he got a phone call. One thing led to another and there he was
Thursday, coaching his first regular-season game. It was, in fact, his first
meaningful game as a professional coach.
“Not a good way to start,” he says.
Ask him about Thursday evening in Asiago and the memories come flooding
back, like water from a Zamboni as it resurfaces the ice. But they arrive in
a herky-jerky fashion, like so many leaves in the autumn wind. It’s like
Camazzola is living a nightmare that he just knows will come to an end in
mid-sentence.
But every time he wakes up he realizes that Darcy Robinson is still dead,
that the young defenceman from Kamloops who collapsed early in Thursday’s
game against AS Renon won’t be in his stall in the Asiago dressing room at
the team’s game Thursday, that Robinson’s dream of playing for Italy in the
2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, in front of family and friends, also
died Thursday on that sheet of ice in Asiago.
Talk with Camazzola and you hear a voice tinged with bewilderment and
amazement, confusion and awe. It’s like he doesn’t yet believe what he saw
but he knows that, yes, it really happened.
“We had a faceoff in the offensive zone,” Camazzola says. “He was at the
blue line. We won the draw. It came back to him and it went right through
him . . . right in the middle . . . right between his stick and his legs . .
. it went right through him . . . he just didn’t move.
“At that point, he kind of turned a little bit, went back a few steps . . .
he didn’t collapse completely but he went down a bit. And then he got back
up and then he went back into our zone a little bit. And he just collapsed.
It was . . . it was . . . something I just can’t get out my head.”
Now, looking back, having seen the replay a million times in his mind’s eye,
Camazzola says he knew something was wrong the instant the puck went through
Robinson.
“Oh yeah . . . at first, my reaction was . . . after the fact, what . . .
what’s going on?” Camazzola says. “Once he collapsed, everybody thought he’d
had a seizure or something like that.”
It turned out to be much more serious than that, and now people, including
Camazzola and his players are searching for answers.
“He was the biggest guy (on the team) for sure,” Camazzola says of the
6-foot-4, 240-pound Robinson. “He was a big, strong young kid. That’s what
just blows me away. How can it happen to a guy that young?
“There are a couple of players who were close to him who are having a tough
time. Once everybody finds out exactly what happened, then at least we know
if it was something natural like a heart attack or aneurysm, then maybe
people can feel a little bit better about it.
“It’s been a tough four or five days.”
An autopsy was completed Monday, but results have yet to be released. A
memorial service will be held in Asiago today, after which Robinson’s
parents, Ernie and Dave, will begin the longest journey of their lives.
Accompanied by Darcy’s fiancee, Kristen Windsor, and her father, Brian, the
2006 B.C. men’s curling champion, they’ll drive 90 minutes to Venice and
board an airplane as they return home to bury their eldest son. Parents
aren’t supposed to bury their children; it just isn’t supposed to happen.
Kristen joined Darcy in Asiago last week and, yes, she was at Thursday’s
game.
“She arrived the night before and . . . geez . . . she’s having a tough
time,” Camazzola says. “It’s sad. It’s just sad all around.”
Camazzola and his players have been on the ice a couple of times since
Thursday, “just to get our minds off it.”
“Obviously,” he adds, “it’s been, you know . . . yeah, it’s been tough. It’s
a challenge to keep the guys together.”
And there are times, Camazzola admits, when it’s been hard to keep himself
together. He’s alone in Asiago which means when he is through looking after
his team there is no one there for him.
“My family is at home (in Vancouver),” he says. “There’s nobody here. That’s
been tough.”
He and Asiago will resume their season Thursday when HC Fassa pays a visit.
And life will go on, as it always does. Only time will tell if Asiago is
able to recover and find some success this season.
“We’re average,” Camazzola says of a team that last season finished in last
place. “We’re a young team; the kids are working hard. I think we can move
up the ladder and be in the middle of the pack.”
Robinson’s death, however, has left a huge hole in the roster. As Camazzola
explains: “Darcy was playing as an Italian . . . and it’s tough to find a
North American who is an Italian, especially at this stage of the season.”
At one time, Camazzola was one of those guys. After bouncing around the IHL
and AHL — his resume includes three NHL games — Camazzola spent 11 seasons
playing in Europe, six of them in Italy.
In fact, more than 20 years ago, Camazzola played 95 games over two seasons
with the WHL’s Kamloops Junior Oilers. But he didn’t come to meet Robinson
until about three weeks ago. Still, in a very short period of time, Robinson
made an indelible impression on the coach, as he did with so many other
people — and if you don’t believe that, check out the page that was created
a few days ago at Facebook.com. It now has well over 700 members.
Robinson, who was playing on an Italian passport that was available to him
because of his mother’s heritage, talked with Camazzola “a few times” about
the possibility of playing for Italy at the 2010 Olympics.
“He was really excited about the opportunity of maybe making the team,”
Camazzola says. “He was working real hard. He wanted to make the national
team and have the opportunity to play in the Olympics if they made it, if
they qualified.”
The conversation is almost at an end. All the words have been spoken. There
isn’t anything left to say. One senses, however, that Camazzola doesn’t want
it to, but, like all things, including life, it must.
“Oh, God, he was a good kid . . . he was a good kid,” the coach offers. “I
had a lot of good conversations with the guy. He was happy . . . he always
thought about other people first.
“He was a good kid . . . a really good kid.”

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca.