Vince D’Adamo: What did you enjoy most about competing in athletics throughout your life?
Diano Pachote: By far the most enjoyable part of competition through athletics was and still is the level of play it brings out of my opponents. I love to compete and challenge the guy across from me and when that person meets me with the same energy it makes it worthwhile, knowing you're getting the best out of your opponent while giving everything you have.
D’Adamo: What have you been doing since graduating from high school?
Pachote: I've been playing football at Chapman University, an NCAA Division III school that is part of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC). In my first two seasons I started at fullback for the Panthers and as I enter my junior year I wish to transition more to the primary ball carrier. Other than football, I have been furthering my education with a major in Strategic and Corporate Communication and a minor in Integrated Educational Studies.
D’Adamo: What was your favorite class at Justin-Siena High?
Pachote: It's hard to narrow it down to one favorite class so I'll have to leave it between a junior year English class on Survival/Science Fiction literature taught by Mike Douglass and a Statistics class I took senior year with current head football coach Brandon LaRocco.
D’Adamo: What was your favorite athletic moment at Justin-Siena High?
Pachote: As a team, nothing will beat winning against San Marin at home for the second time that season in the pouring rain for a Section Championship. Individually, it was my very first game on varsity my sophomore year against Saint Mary's College High School of Berkeley and on my second touchdown of the night I was running up the sideline into the endzone and a cornerback was there to meet me at the goal line. with about 5 yards space between us I saw him lower his head and shoulders and I just jumped over the top of him into the endzone. It was then one of my fellow classmates gave everyone in the student section my phone number and I received so many texts my phone broke, but that was definitely an unforgettable welcome to Varsity.
D’Adamo: How much do you feel you have grown personally since graduating from high school and how much of that do you trace to athletics?
Pachote: I don't like to say I am a different person since leaving high school but I believe I have certainly developed and grown exponentially as an individual. The root of that growth has definitely come from Chapman football and how it forced me to grow up and learn more about being responsible and what it really meant to represent the school while under a microscope. Justin-Siena prepared me to handle that but after moving out of Napa into a foreign environment, I didn't have the same support and familiarity I always had so I was able to join a new family.
D’Adamo: Within your family, who have been the most influential people?
Pachote: The men in my family are amazing, particularly my grandfather, my dad, and my cousin Eddie Aguayo. Eddie laid the framework for me and set the bar for what a Brave was supposed to be like. Without his guidance, I would not have had the same experience at Justin-Siena.
D’Adamo: Name a historical figure, dead or alive, in or out of sports you would most like to meet.
Pachote: Without a doubt it would be Jackie Robinson. He lived an amazing life in a time where he was not accepted as a human and be broke through the resistance and has allowed the best competition, regardless of skin color, to thrive and define a new era of competitive sports where everyone is included.
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