Alba Berlin’s youth coach Stefan Ludwig has been training with daycare and school children in her neighborhood for years.
Foto: Florian Ullbrich
When a group of second graders walks back to their school on Lipschitzallee from their excursion, two students suddenly stop. “Hey Stefan!” calls one. “Are we going to play together again soon?” asks the other. Stefan Ludwig is currently explaining his work to sports club representatives from all over Germany. Their effects are most impressive, however, in the constant interruptions to his lecture while walking through Gropiusstadt in the Berlin district of Neukölln. Ludwig is obviously someone who makes an impression on young people. And it’s consistently positive. Again and again during these two hours in the midday heat, he is recognized by children on the street. They call out to him, wave, greet. And the man in the dark blue Alba Berlin shirt knows almost everyone by name.
Stefan Ludwig is a basketball coach and is employed in the youth department of the German champions. However, he spends most of his working hours at day-care centers and elementary schools in Gropiusstadt. The Lisa Tetzner elementary school, where this walk is currently stopping, has been cooperating with Ludwig’s employer since 2016. Nine other schools in Berlin do the same, mostly in so-called social hotspots. Alba’s trainers form tandems with sports teachers and then get additional indoor time for their basketball club and club training. “We’ve been taking care of the children since daycare,” says Ludwig. “The hall is 50 years old, but they always want to come in because they’ve been with us all the way to Alba.” Jerseys and with the same logo that the pros around Maodo Lo and Luke Sikma also wear on the chest.
Principal Stephan Witzke is very happy about that, because the trainers help him immensely. »We have integrated Alba into our physical education classes and from the next school year our Alba coach will be the only sports specialist for 430 students with us. Unfortunately, we won’t have any other fully trained sports teachers then,” says Witzke, describing the blatant shortage of staff in the subject of sports, which is currently affecting so many Berlin schools.
The fact that Alba Berlin’s trainers don’t just offer classic AGs in the afternoon is definitely in the interest of the club, says youth coordinator Nicholas Behne. “We want them to be involved in everyday school life, because that’s the only way to promote sustainable physical activity.” Alba hires the trainers, but most of them, like Ludwig, spend a large part of their working hours in schools and day-care centers. The money that headmaster Witzke has to pay Alba for this comes from a bonus program for schools, where more than half of the parents receive transfer payments. Elsewhere it is sometimes the normal personnel cost budget that finances the position, sometimes it is the development association, sometimes the neighborhood management. Alba, in turn, can offer its youth coaches full-time positions instead of depending on volunteers and working students like so many others. According to Behne, the club’s youth sports budget is only financed by around ten percent from classic membership fees. So it’s a win-win situation for schools and clubs – and for the children.
A year ago, Alba founded his »Sport networked« initiative to exchange ideas with other clubs across Germany on social work. This is also the case with the Rostock Seawolves, who were promoted to the Basketball Bundesliga a few weeks ago. The people of Mecklenburg have also been working at primary schools and day-care centers for years. Nevertheless, Benjamin Rausch, who is responsible for the young women in the club, says that networking with the Berliners made a difference in the first year: “We learned from Alba to think more in social spaces. We no longer conclude contracts with just one provider, where children can then drop out when they switch from daycare to primary school. Now we’re trying to support them for much longer, especially in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods,” says Rausch. Mobility is less there because parents don’t drive their children across town to the sports club, often for financial reasons. “So we’re bringing the sport into the educational institutions of the children.”
Basketball is not yet played at daycare centers. “We do a ball school, gymnastics, movement games to promote the children’s coordination skills,” says Rausch. And always playful! “Blunt heels don’t work with them.” It only becomes more basketball-specific with AGs from the second grade onwards. The Seawolves offer their services once a week.
Society also benefits from this work. Studies have shown that those who exercise a lot early in life do so more often as adults, says Rausch. “Of course we benefit too, because one or the other talent will be there, who we then give the opportunity to play basketball at a high level.”
The Seawolves also finance their trainers and materials with public funds. It is currently the program “AUF!leben” of the German Children and Youth Foundation that is intended to bring children back into fixed structures after the pandemic. But such programs will soon expire, and a well-known ally will be of great help in negotiations with politicians to stabilize the payments: »Alba has been demonstrating for years that this work has a positive effect. We tell the politicians: ‘We too have the strength to do it here.’ That makes it easier to persuade than if you just come up with an idea,” reports Rausch. The Seawolves are still rarely able to hire their trainers permanently.
Even Bundesliga club SC Freiburg has only three main employees in its social program, plus 50 to 60 mini-jobbers, working students and flat-rate workers. Tobias Rauber heads the Social Commitment department and has been cooperating with Alba for years. He also walked through the Neukölln district with child poverty rates of almost 50 percent at the “Sport networks Summit” last week.
Even if things don’t happen to this degree in Freiburg, it’s becoming increasingly rare for children to join the sports clubs there too: “In South Baden football, every fifth boys’ team and every second girls’ team has been withdrawn in the last ten years. These are alarming numbers,” says Rauber. »The clubs are breaking up.« So the SC also brings the sport directly to the children. We benefit from that because they come to the stadium and maybe buy a jersey. But also the smaller clubs, when the children later grow into adults who play sports all their lives. »And if one of them becomes a professional with us, that’s cool, but just a ‘waste product’. That just happens. Just not random anymore. Because the greater the range of athletes, the more talent there is among them.«
Alba Berlin has been acting according to this motto for more than a decade. The association builds playgrounds and basketball courts in residential areas such as the adventure playground in Gropiusstadt. Balls are on site, the baskets are height-adjustable to keep the offer low-threshold. Above all, however, they bring sport to educational institutions such as the Janusz Korczak School right next door. To do this, Alba had to overcome many bureaucratic hurdles. And they are congruent everywhere in Germany, which is why networking makes so much sense for the actors. “I’m impressed by Alba’s handling of it. The club is a role model for not seeing obstacles as a problem, but as a challenge that you can overcome,” says Marcel Fiß, coach in Rostock. »There are creative minds who are actively looking for solutions and then find ways to implement them. That’s what they enjoy, it motivates them.«
After their visit to Berlin, Fiß and his colleague seem to be self-motivated enough that their path is the right one in Rostock as well: “That’s the future,” says Benjamin Rausch. »A sports club has to network with educational institutions. It won’t work any other way.«
