“The company seemed serious to me right from the start and I made myself available to continue its story ”

When and how did your passion for basketball start?

Very trivially I approached basketball when my children started with minibasket. I did not know this sport personally, even if the sporting world, in this case table tennis, had played an important part in my youth. The company immediately seemed very serious to me and my husband and I found ourselves attending it a little more every year. After some time, at the request of Stefano Catalani, whom I want to remember as a splendid person and a great fan of this sport as well as president of Maior, we convinced ourselves to join this project, seeing the enthusiasm and passion that Stefano and the whole group they put in making children grow with the values ​​of sport and being together, having fun and becoming men as well as athletes. From here it was a short step to join the company. In 2015 we enter the board and today I agreed to make myself available to carry out the project of a company that has allowed basketball to be played at high levels in Senigallia for forty years.

Let’s make a brief historical mention of the company

The current Pallacanestro Senigallia club was born in 1980, after a season that ended with the relegation from the Promotion Championship of the previous US ACLI club that had been carrying out basketball in Senigallia since the 70s. A stimulus for the new club was the availability of the new sports hall. sport in via Capanna and the addition of new players, such as Alberto Oliveti and Antonio Gallucci, who dragged the team from promotion to Serie D and then to C2 and C1. At the end of the 90s the company will reach the top of national amateur basketball with players of the caliber of Matteo Minelli, under the guidance of the president Claudio Moroni and the management staff who brought us here.

What courses and initiatives do you carry out? What are the best placings you have achieved in recent years?

Our company has a youth sector ranging from the minibasket sector (from five to 11 years old) and youth teams from under 13 to under 18. The company “tasted” for the first time the B2 series in 2001/02, winning the second place in the final with Cesena. Since then, Senigallia Basketball has continuously played the championship between A amateurs and DNB. I also want to mention the great satisfaction of having been champions of Italy in 2013 with the elite under 19 team, coached by Alessandro Valli.

What is the best memory you have linked to the discipline of the ‘sliced ​​ball’ that you remember with greatest pleasure and would like to tell?

I am reminded of the very recent past, when we managed to grab a wonderful seventh place in the playoffs by meeting a team as strong as Taranto. We came from a disastrous season, between Covid problems and economic difficulties due to the renunciation of some sponsors, very expensive pads and practically stopped youths. The boys felt the weight of all this and the mood in the locker room was not the best, as it had never happened. Among other things, we were the only Marche region to face the first part of the season with very long trips to Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia during the lockdown periods, we were terrified of facing the playout and eventually relegating. Then the turning point … a change of coach, albeit very good like Paolini, replaced by his deputies Ruini and Peverada, gave the shock and our boys got back into the game. Having conquered Ancona, Jesi and Fabriano, the enthusiasm is back and so is the euphoria in the locker room. We got to the playoffs against the very strong Taranto (which had never lost even a game in the regular season) where they gave us all for dead, but in Game 2 the boys pulled out an immense heart and gave us a truly unexpected victory. Then Taranto took races 3 and 4, but our victory in their home will truly remain in the annals of the club and in our hearts.

What are, in your opinion, the greatest physical and human qualities that a basketball player must have? How important is cohesion within a team?

It is difficult to talk about specific physical qualities because there are very different roles that require just as many different physical qualities. In general terms, however, I would say that explosiveness is an essential feature for a basketball player, together with great resistance to fatigue and consistency in training. As for human skills, I would say that humility is certainly fundamental even for a top player and the willingness to sacrifice something on the pitch for the benefit of a better game for the whole team. Over the years I have seen teams made up of very strong and highly experienced players, but who with their personalities and the difficulties created in the locker room did not allow us to achieve the desired goals. Cohesion is certainly fundamental, if you manage to create harmony in the locker room and each player makes his commitment and energy available to his teammates, then it will be possible to achieve excellent results, perhaps even having fun and entertaining the public and fans.

How is the championship going?

I can say that I am very happy with the approach of our boys. They train very well, certainly thanks to a coach and an athletic trainer that I really appreciate and on the pitch they proved to be a tough team for everyone, including the big names that we faced in the first games. A championship that began immediately uphill with Roseto and then with the two Rieti, with whom we lost, but fighting on every ball and point to point until the end. Defense is certainly our pride; At first we may have struggled more in attack, but now we are making progress in that too. We have won all the games played with the teams of our level, playing good basketball, intense and physical, I think it’s also fun to watch for the public. Our ranking certainly pays off for our efforts and is currently above all expectations. We are in fact in the playoff position, with the same score as Ancona and Rimini, which among other things will be our next opponents (respectively Sunday 5/12 at home and Wednesday 8/12 away), certainly teams built to reach the top.

Goals and ambitions for the future?

The real ambition, however, is not that relating to placing in the standings, even if I certainly do not hide the dream of a placement perhaps in the playoffs, but that of making the company grow starting from the youth teams, in which we are investing and doing more projects. important. Certainly it is the Serie B team that drives us and makes us have more fun, but the solid foundations and the maximum ambition will be that of an important nursery from which we can draw to create the foundations of a rosy future for the entire Senigallian basketball. .