There were plenty of long pauses at the other end of the line as Kat Tan tried to gather thoughts on the sudden passing of her idol Kobe Bryant.
“We just all wish that it’s a bad dream right now,” Tan said Monday afternoon from Bacolod City where she was scheduled to make a speaking engagement.
For Tan, Bryant was more than just a basketball idol. Bryant was an inspiration at a time when she had to deal with adversity at an early age.
It was 1996 when Tan, then a nine-year-old student, lost her arm during an accident at a school fair in La Salle-Zobel.
While recovering, she began to watch NBA games of Bryant, who at the time was a wide-eyed 17-year-old rookie for the Los Angeles Lakers.
“The year the accident happened, it was his rookie year,” she recalled. “I was in the hospital and that was the first time I started watching him. He’s still not the Kobe Bryant that he is, he was, but you know there’s something in him that I saw something special.”
Motivated, Tan was able to defy expectations and earned a spot on La Salle-Zobel’s varsity team. She also got a chance to meet Bryant two years after the accident when the latter made his first Manila visit.
Tan would play varsity until high school before turning basketball into a recreation as she focused on her collegiate studies at College of St. Benilde, Now 33, Tan works as a junior graphic designer at Zobel while maintaining her fandom on Bryant.
“He is a part of who I am today, of my story,” said Tan, who met Bryant two more times, including a moment where the NBA great signed a framed newspaper article of their 1998 encounter.
“I know we’re not that close, but can you imagine the impact that he had in my life,” said Tan. “It’s hard. I’m trying to keep together.”
By the time this article is posted, Tan has probably concluded her motivational speech. Before hanging up, she admitted that it would difficult to “keep it together” in order to tell her story.
But Tan knows Bryant will be there to guide her.
“I don’t know how will I do it but bahala na si Kobe sa akin,” she said.
