NSU men’s basketball is constantly changing with student athletes coming and going, but there has been one constant for 22 years.
David Chaviano, better known as “Chavi,” is an equipment room assistant who first started at NSU in August 2003. Since then, he has become the heart of the program.
Chavi’s role is crucial for the team. He said he is always there behind the scenes making sure the players have everything they need.
“When they walk in, they don’t have to touch anything at all. Just play ball, that’s it,” Chaviano said. “If they don’t have their things, they can’t perform on the floor. It’s like a rock band. If the rock band’s missing an instrument, they can’t perform.”
He is proud to have been at NSU for this long and credits the atheletes as his reason for staying.
“It is the joy and fun that the student-athletes bring out of me. I’m like a little kid,” Chaviano said.
His passion for the team and the program does not go unnoticed by the men’s basketball players, including fifth-year forward Tommy Sala.
“I think it was like the first game. I didn’t know how intense he was on the sidelines. The first game I was ever dressed for NSU. The ball just gets tipped off, and from right behind me, as loud as I’ve ever heard, ‘Let’s go,’ and I turn around and it’s Chavi,” Sala said. “It’s been like that from that game on and every game for the rest of my career. That was when I realized how much he really cared.”
Robert “Bubba” Baroniel, assistant athletic director of athletic external affairs, said that Chavi’s smile is what makes him so special.
“The smile opens the gateway to the personality. He is an extremely friendly and joking person. He’s just somebody that you can just talk to and engage with and interact with,” Baroniel said.
Baroniel was a student-athlete on NSU’s men’s baseball team, graduating in 2015. He said student athletes who aren’t on the men’s basketball team don’t always get to know all sides of who Chavi is as a person.
“As a non-basketball student athlete, you don’t really have an appreciation for everything he does. One of my favorite parts about me being a student, my relationship with Chavi is that when I was a baseball player here, we used to shoot free throws once a week, and it would be a best out of five. And I never beat Chavi,” Baroniel said. “So apart from being as awesome of a manager as he is, he’s also that much better of a free-throw shooter than most people know.”
Nick Smith, assistant men’s basketball coach, met Chavi when he first toured NSU.
“When I came on my visit back in 2017, I introduced myself and we kind of clicked right away and we’ve been best friends ever since,” Smith said.
Chavi said he is a friend of anyone in NSU Athletics. His favorite part of working at NSU Athletics is the people.
“I love these people to death; I wouldn’t trade anything for anything,” Chaviano said.
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