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Joey Grosso’s name wouldn’t be familiar to most Hurricanes fans. In fact, he had played the linebaker position at UPenn from 2010-13, and was ready to start law school at the University of Miami this fall. Using his remaining eligibility, he qualified as a walk-on for the Hurricanes and had been officially added to the team’s roster on Tuesday.
The next day, he died during a diving accident on the first day of lobster mini-season.
According to CBS Miami, on Wednesday morning Grosso was part of a large group that was diving for lobster off of a commercial fishing boat. The boat was off the coast of Pompano Beach at the time.
Most of the group had returned back to the boat, but Grosso decided to make one last dive. The crew soon realized he didn’t surface and called for help.
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“He went down for the last dive to get one more lobster and at the end of the day, for a lobster, a life,” his step-father Philip Franchina told the station.
The Miami Herald confirms now that Grosso had made the Hurricanes football team, but had not yet been assigned a jersey.
“He was a diehard UM fan – our whole family is,” Michael Becker, a first cousin, told the paper. “He didn’t even care about playing; he just wanted to say he was a Miami Hurricane. It meant the world to him.”
Grosso, a resident of Lighthouse Point, had played for Pope John Paul II High School in Boca Raton, and had graduated with a 4.0 GPA.
Unfortunately, lobster mini-season, during which divers scramble to get the first grab at the year’s lobster, is often deadly with a handful of fatalities occurring almost every year.
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