University of Georgia Athletics
Pastrana Savors His Cuban Roots
September 19, 2024 | Men's Basketball, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
Erik Pastrana grew up in Miami, and it was there that the son and grandson of Cuban immigrants found his love of basketball. It was also in and around Miami, and at home with his tight-knit family, that the Georgia men's basketball assistant coach's love of food and culture was born.
"Once you leave South Florida, and particularly Miami, you realize how different the rest of the country is," Pastrana said. "But if you grow up down there, this is what normal life looks like. You've got people speaking 15 different languages, you've got different cultures, which is really awesome."
National Hispanic American Heritage Month runs from Sept. 15-Oct. 15, and the unusual start-finish dates coincide with the Independence Day celebrations of several Latin American nations. Pastrana is a proud Cuban American and a member of the Latino Association of Basketball Coaches.
Pastrana played basketball at Wellington High School. As a point guard and team leader, his start in coaching began in many ways as a teenager.
"I liked to get everybody involved, communication, just really enjoyed tying everything together, which is probably why I ended up in this profession," he said after being hired in 2022.
Another reason Pastrana wound up in coaching was his relationship with family friend Frank Martin, the longtime collegiate coach who took South Carolina to the Final Four in 2017 and is currently the head coach at UMass. Martin, another Miami native and Cuban American, was the coach at Miami High School during Pastrana's prep days. Two other coaches, Shakey Rodriguez and Pastrana's coach at Wellington, Jay McCormick, were also big influences.
"All of those guys, I just looked up to them," said Pastrana, who thought he would wind up coaching high school ball one day. And he might have if Martin hadn't hired Pastrana as a graduate assistant at Kansas State in 2007 after he graduated from Florida State.
"I kind of grew up as a little kid chasing him around," Pastrana said of Martin. "I looked up to Miami High because they were winning state championships every year, and fast forward some years and he gets the chance to coach at K-State, and he gave me an opportunity.
"It was really cool that I was able to look up to somebody that kind of looked like me, spoke another language, wasn't your traditional basketball coach, especially in a state like Florida and an area like Miami where football is pretty predominant."
After two years under Martin at Kansas State, Pastrana's coaching career has taken him to nearly every level of basketball and across the country. He's worked at Power 5 programs like K-State and Oklahoma State and at the community and junior college levels; he's coached AAU teams, and he spent a year as the head coach at Daytona State College.
In 2021, Mike White brought Pastrana onto his staff at Florida, and when White was hired as the Bulldogs' coach in 2022, he brought Pastrana with him.
"Eric's a really talented guy," White said. "He's very intelligent, he's a deep thinker; he's got an innate ability to connect with young people, both in terms of recruiting and player development. He's got some head-coaching experience at the junior college level, which is invaluable to program building and staff meetings. Most importantly, he's a great human being."
When he was hired by White to be an assistant on his staff at Florida, Pastrana got a hearty social media welcome from Gainesville's Mi Apa Latin Cafe, a Cuban restaurant with a few locations in Florida. White said Pastrana is the go-to guy for food, particularly Latin American food, when the coaches travel together.
"He's undefeated," White said of Pastrana's restaurant choices. "He's a foodie in general, but the Latin American spots he's taken us to have been terrific."
Like a lot of us, Pastrana's love of food started at home.
"Rice and beans, sweet plantains, really thin steaks, chicken, arroz con pollo, which is really popular — it's basically chicken and rice, with yellow rice," he said. "Anytime I go home, I'm like, Somebody needs to cook something.
"My mom cooks well, but my grandmother will always be at the top when it comes to Cuban cooks."
As for Pastrana's cooking skills, he admits they need some work. Life as a busy college basketball coach doesn't leave a lot of time for dinners at home. His brother, Leonard, who still lives in Miami, is keeping the family Cuban cooking traditions going.
"As my brother started to have a family, he was like, You know what, I want to hold on to this," Pastrana said. "You hold on to certain things that are really important to you."
One thing Pastrana has held onto tightly is his love of Cuban coffee.
"The first thing I asked when I got here was, Where can I get a café con leche? It's coffee with steamed milk, and it's a very Cuban thing," he said. "I haven't found a place, which is why I have really picked up making my own. I'll order very specific beans to make Cuban coffee at home.
"I don't drink it every day because I'll just be wired, but that's definitely a big thing for me."
Despite his Cuban roots, Pastrana has never been to the country. It is, to say the least, complicated. His grandparents and his mother, a young girl at the time, fled Cuba after Fidel Castro took over.
"There's a lot of pain that comes from what happened in the early stages when Castro got there," Pastrana said. "My grandfather on my mother's side was a very successful businessman, and (Castro's people) literally came in and took all of his stuff. Thankfully, he had enough financially that he grabbed my mom and my grandmother, his wife, and was like, 'All right, we're leaving.' That's obviously a scary thing."
Pastrana's grandmother passed away last December, and there is talk within the family of one day spreading her ashes over the water near where she grew up. It would be a fitting gesture of thanks to his grandparents for the sacrifices they made to come to the U.S., leaving everything and everyone they knew behind to start a new life in a foreign land.
"That's a different level of sacrifice," he said. "I'm obviously very thankful for my grandfather and my grandmother for bringing my mom over here. My brother's really successful in his avenue of work, I'm successful in mine, and that's all thanks to them."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.