Hours before Barça CBS were promoted to the Endesa Women’s League, Ainhoa López recovered a phrase to recall the enormous difficulties that the Barça team has been forced to overcome in the last two years. “Illusion never hurts.” Flat and short. The player, who is receiving chemotherapy treatment to fight a cancer of the lymphatic system, came to mind the moments of adversity of a locker room that last year was left without promotion after winning all the matches of the season minus one. The last, the decisive. A year later, basketball has done justice to a team that has worked like few others for months and months.
The news of the Catalan promotion took me to Valencia, where the Queen’s Cup was played this weekend. The tournament has served to demonstrate the good health of women’s basketball. The event was able to gather many fans in La Fonteta, where good basketball does not make gender distinctions. The level of the stands was up to the spectacle that was seen on the floor and showed the immense possibilities of a sport that generates a special complicity between players and fans. The interaction of the athletes with the fans makes possible an emotional complicity that, in general, men’s basketball gave up some time ago.
The proposals of Cadí La Seu and Sppar Girona did not achieve the sporting goals they pursued, but their projects do not return to weaknesses in Valencia, where Catalan fans proudly fired the players of two teams that competed as well as they did. power. Teamwork is not just about winning.
The great challenge ahead, which is now joined by Barça CBS, is to promote a global Endesa Women’s League that all too often only has good local initiatives. There are better ideas than ways to execute them. There is more passion than diffusion. La Seu d’Urgell and Girona are two examples of how to root a project in a specific environment with esteem and professionalism, but clubs need more tools to make their proposal known and gain visibility. The public exists and sponsors have understood that they can get more return with less investment. Partnering with women’s sports does not add up, it multiplies. It’s a friendly brand of manual. All that’s left is for someone to thread the needle.
