Jared Price is short and never played college basketball, but he enjoys a tie that binds him to a tall man who did. The former engineer of AncestryDNA, which links people to their past, is connected to Cougar legend Kresimir Cosic like no other BYU grad in the world.
The Price-Cosic bloodline doesnโt intersect for generations, and the two men never met face to face, but their very different worlds began to align in 2002 when Price opened his mission call from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was assigned to the Slovenia Ljubljana Mission, which included Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia โ countries that broke away from the former Yugoslavia โ Cosicโs homeland.
โIt was much like serving a mission in the very first days of the church. Nobody knew who we were,โ Price told the โYโs Guysโ podcast. โIt wasnโt long after the war and most of our church houses (in Croatia) were riddled with bullets.โNow
The people may not have known Price or the missionaries, but they knew Cosic.
โThey had been through horror with the war and the Gospel of Christ was unbelievable for those people,โ said Price, who spent most of his mission in Croatia. โKreso โ we owe everything to him. He opened the country. He became the Deputy-Ambassador to the United States. He convinced the government to allow the missionaries into Croatia in the first place.
โEvery person I met in the church โ they knew him. Everybody knew him. Our district president, some of the highest leadership in the church, they were all former basketball players.โThirty-three years before Price proselyted in the Balkans, Cosic pulled into Provo and during his time at BYU, he was converted to the church. After earning All-America status with the Cougars, the loyal countryman turned down a career in the NBA and returned home to play professionally in Yugoslavia.
Cosicโs career hit its crescendo in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, when Yugoslavia beat Italy 86-77 to win the proud nationโs first and only basketball gold medal. Throughout his steady growth of international stardom, Cosic kept a spotlight on the Latter-day Saint faith.We heard Kreso stories all the time. He was such a nice, big-hearted, generous guy, he couldnโt help but talk about it. It changed his life and helped him out,โ Price said. โIn just the perfect spirit of missionary work, he shared what he loved with his friends and his friends were touched by that. That guy changed my life in significant ways. I feel a lot of gratitude for him.โ
Priceโs mission ended in 2004, but his connection to Cosic was only getting started and the biggest tie that would bind them together was still years away.
Jersey retirement
On March 4, 2006, 11 years after Cosic, who wore No. 11 at BYU, died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a jammed-packed Marriott Center gave his family a standing ovation.
Joining President Thomas S. Monson of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the halftime ceremony was Cosicโs wife Ljerka and children Ana, Iva and Kresimir Jr.Jersey retirement
On March 4, 2006, 11 years after Cosic, who wore No. 11 at BYU, died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a jammed-packed Marriott Center gave his family a standing ovation.
Joining President Thomas S. Monson of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the halftime ceremony was Cosicโs wife Ljerka and children Ana, Iva and Kresimir Jr.
