You are 15 years old and you want to be a basketball player. Many of your teammates are hesitant, and it is starting to become difficult for them to combine training and school. Even parents or friends advise them: “focus on your studies and leave the ball behind.” Statistics say that three out of four will succumb, a degree of abandonment that does not occur in the same measure among boys. And it has serious consequences for them: basketball, as with team sports, provides health and instills meritorious values also off the court: teamwork, sacrifice, determination… What can be done to stop this trend? The answer offered by the project Law6which is being held this week and until Sunday 28th in Barcelona, has deserved the award of the first edition of the contest Basket Girlz, an Endesa initiative which aims to reverse the reality that they themselves have described. 24 promising basketball players will train alongside professionals such as Claudia Soriano (Ensino Lugo), Regina Aguilar (Cadí La Seu), Txell Alarcón (Hozono Global Jairis) and Laura Méndez (UFAB 49) and will have the opportunity to be examined by top-level coaches who, through individual reports and tactical, physical and fundamental exercises, will show them the path to follow in order to reach the goal of becoming a professional. The dream of all of them: to make basketball their way of life.
An idea that came to them, says one of the founders, Sergio Vera, an experienced women’s basketball coach, while having a coffee. And from the moment it popped into their heads it held them hostage and forced them to get to work. They knew Catalan women’s basketball like the back of their hand, the professional level, the youth teams, the amateur; many summers they had received calls from players asking for help with their individual post-season training… The need was obvious, everything seemed overwhelmingly logical. It is those elastic summer hours that basketball players usually dedicate to improving physical or technical aspects of their game that they do not have time to pay attention to during the competition: shooting mechanics, leg power, lateral movement speed. There are thousands of details that need to be polished. An arduous job, sometimes thankless, says Vera, because it has to be done alone, away from the sight of others.
Law6 also wanted to remedy this. Everything is better as a team, in a community. And the positive reception of the idea did not come as a surprise: “All those who have been allowed to do so by international competitions have wanted to join in,” says Sergio Vera, who, for such a colossal task, wanted to surround himself with professionals such as Marta Santiago, coach of 3×3 basketball in the U21 category and coach of one of the best historical youth teams in women’s basketball, such as Siglo XXI in Barcelona. “This is a first step, hopefully we can expand this experience outside of Catalonia and repeat it every summer,” they both say with enthusiasm.
How does Law6 work?
Before meeting on the court of the La Salle Bonanova pavilion in Barcelona on Tuesday, the 24 participants sent videos of themselves playing, images that the 10 coaches gathered in the project analysed to prepare individualised reports. In these documents they detailed their strengths, their weaknesses and the development that they could foresee for themselves, if they worked on the indicated aspects. This was invaluable information that, in the environment of training clubs, is rarely able to extract, analyse and make available to them, due to lack of resources; a perspective that suddenly allowed them to imagine themselves on the path to the professional player they want to become. And what could be better for these young talents than to train these facets side by side with stars such as Laura Méndez or Txell Alarcón? “It is a crucial question for young players,” says Vera; “They can see very useful tangible things, such as how much I have to improve my shot to reach the level of this professional guard or which player I can be inspired by according to my conditions.”
This is a learning process that goes far beyond the closing of these sessions. Because, once their muscular or joint condition has been diagnosed, their physical condition, once the risk of injuries that, for example, are also predicted by these reports is known, the advice and exercises carried out throughout the camp by the players under the supervision of their coaches or the new sports habits incorporated when sharing the court with the professionals can and should continue later during the season with their teams.
“At first, when a player puts herself in your hands, she makes an act of faith,” explains Santiago, “but it doesn’t take long for them to evaluate how what you offer them is working.” A message that resonates because, she says, it helps them work on their competitive culture but, at the same time, she doesn’t forget to instill values that later take root in the young women. “We are there for them.” A unique opportunity, a door to the fulfillment of their dreams. These 24 young women today have many more reasons to persevere, to not give up, to continue being Basket Girlz.
