EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - When tragedy struck Sergej Vucetic’s family, his other family - his Evansville family - rushed to his aid.
“It took us seven seconds to decide, and that was if we are going to go now or seven seconds from now,” Maid Hamzic said. “We drove like idiots down (U.S. Highway) 41.”
Vucetic was with the University of Evansville men’s basketball team preparing for its Jan. 25 game at Northern Iowa when he learned his father had been killed in a car crash back home in Serbia. Video coordinator Chad Harmon drove Vucetic to Chicago to catch a flight. The Hamzics and Vucetic’s girlfriend, UE volleyball player Jelena Merseli, met them there to make sure Vucetic had the necessary paperwork to return to the U.S. whenever he was ready.
“They were there for me, supporting me basically every day on the phone with them talking about what’s happening,” Vucetic said of Hamzic and his wife, Jasna. “It was just unbelievable support from people you don’t expect you’re ever going to meet and then they become a part of your life. I’m sometimes closer with them than with some of my other cousins back home.”
The Hamzics came to America 19 years ago as refugees from the Bosnian War. They received initial help from Central Christian Church in Washington, Indiana, and within a few months moved to Evansville for better career opportunities. Both Maid and Jasna have worked at the Toyota plant in Gibson County for the last 15 years.
In the past few years, they’ve become close to a handful of UE student-athletes from former Yugoslavian countries.
It started with Serbian tennis player Aleksandra Dzakula, who completed her career in 2012. One day, she followed Jasna and Maid through the aisles of a Walmart before working up the nerve to approach them.
“What language are you speaking?” she asked.
“I said, ’Bosnian,’” Maid Hamzic recalled. “She said, ’Do you speak Serbian?’ And I was like ’Of course.’ That’s like asking someone from Indiana if they can understand American English from Kentucky.”
The Hamzics began following the Evansville men’s basketball program after befriending Croatian swingman Mislav Brzoja, who graduated a year early in 2016 and is now playing professionally in his native country. Brzoja introduced Vucetic to the Hamzics in the summer of 2014, and they’ve grown close.
The Hamzics have attended nearly every home game for the last three years, and some of the road games within a short drive.
“When you go somewhere far away from home and you meet somebody from your hometown, you have so much things to talk about,” Vucetic said. “You can talk about back home, what happened on TV, why that happened.
“Then you find out that you’re maybe cousins because it’s not a huge country and everybody is connected in some way. You find out that you know the same people or we were at the same places maybe a couple months apart. It helps so much having somebody to talk to in your home language and remember the stuff that was happening back home. It means the world.”
It also meant a lot to Vucetic to be embraced by the Evansville community after he returned to the team after a three-week absence. He never questioned whether he would come back once he had a plan in place for his mother, Marika, who broke her leg in the car wreck that killed her husband.
Vucetic’s local support system included the Hamzics, his Aces coaches and teammates and even the fans who cheered him upon returning for Evansville’s 87-70 win over Drake on Feb. 14.
“Coach (Marty Simmons) put me in for 20 seconds and I got an ovation, everyone was cheering,” Vucetic said. “That kind of support from the whole Evansville fan base is amazing and they were all telling me they’re glad I’m back and stuff like that. That might be a small thing for somebody else but it means a great deal for me.”
Vucetic said his professors were understanding about his absence from classes and have helped him remain on track to graduate with a global business degree in May. He is still mulling his options: using his degree back in Serbia, pursuing a professional basketball career in Europe or sticking around Evansville a while longer.
Whatever Vucetic decides, he knows he’ll have support.
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Source: Evansville Courier & Press, https://bit.ly/2nx0fUO
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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, https://www.courierpress.com
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