Sebastiano goes to the basket, returns to the field after his illness

 "When my son Giorgio made the basket it was a liberation."

It had been more than ten years that

had put aside his whistle and basketball referee uniform.

But on Sunday, after months of battling a

in his leg that prevented him from walking, he returned to the field.

Starting with his son's basketball game.

"It was a promise, if I get well I'll go back to refereeing," the typical day told the Facebook page.

    Before the illness, for the 39-year-old originally from Noale and resident in Lissone, being away from the pitch was a choice dictated by force majeure: "I refereed until I was 26, I started when I was 12. I got up to the series B and I stopped just a step away from Serie A ".

Impossible to reconcile the referee's commitment with work and family, even if the love for basketball has always remained.

Then, two years ago, Sebastiano noticed a small cyst on his leg, found while doing gymnastics at home, during the first lockdown.

Weeks of tests, in the midst of the pandemic, until the news: a liposarcoma, a rare and aggressive tumor.

Coincidentally, the diagnosis phase was also marked by basketball: "On the day of the biopsy, while I was on the couch, the surgeon came in to do the consultation and said to me 'Seba, do you remember? We refereed together in Verona, I'm Sandro! '. He was a former referee colleague, Sandro Pasquali, also from Veneto and transplanted to Lombardy. "

    With the diagnosis began a path that saw him in a wheelchair, to face cycles of chemo and radiotherapy.

In September, the doctors removed the sarcoma and the entire hamstring with an operation.

Since then, six months of physiotherapy and gymnastics have made him reach the goal of stopping limping and taking a short run.

A goal that allowed him to keep the promise he made when he received his "sentence": "I said to myself, I have to go back to the field and I have to do it for my children", says Sebastiano.

To

respectively 10 and 8 years old, the father passed on the "boundless" passion for basketball: both play in Macherio's team, and Vittoria was also at the match, sitting on the bench.

For Sebastiano, seeing his son make a basket meant a watershed: "Then, of course, this is a path made up of checks and follow-ups. But that moment was a liberation".