University of San Francisco Athletics

Band of Brothers
For the Barretto brothers, however, nothing could keep them apart. Paul and Nic are as close as ever on the men’s tennis team at Cal. “It’s amazing. It’s exactly what we wanted — him and I are extremely close. He’s like my best friend. We live together, and it always keeps it interesting and really fun,” Paul said. “I think it makes everyone else on the team a little bit closer as well. Just because Pauly and I are so close. ... It just makes the rest of the team seem like family also,” Nic said. Even before Paul’s time in Berkeley, all three brothers started their tennis journeys together. Once they were old enough, the Barrettos planned to pick one sport and focus on it, and they all sat down and decided on tennis. “It was easy because my brothers and I all started at the same time, so we all started playing tournaments together,” Paul said. “My dad was a tennis player — he played in college and a little bit on the circuit — but he was also playing when we were growing up, and that kind of put our foot in the door and made us want to be like him.” Although their dad, Eddie Barretto, played for the University of San Francisco and eventually went on to compete on the pro tour, the Barretto brothers made the decision to pick tennis because of their own love for the game. “He never pushed us to play the sport. He never told us we had to play tennis,” Marco said. “It became a group effort in us choosing.” For Paul, as the youngest of the group, his brothers’ influence was basically everything. “It was easy because we all had each other, and we were all really competitive,” Paul said. “We all forced each other to improve because working hard through middle and high school, we all improved off each other.” When Paul was a sophomore in high school, Marco graduated and went off to play at USF like their father. This left Paul and Nic to play together for two years with a rivalry that only brothers could have. “We used to get in so many fights in practice — it was really brutal,” Nic said. When it was time for Nic to go to college, he decided on Cal, while Paul would head to Florida to play at IMG Academy for a year before deciding where he would go to college. But for someone so competitive academically and athletically, Cal was an obvious choice (Daily Californian)."