At 13, Johan Bely, a BCNM graduate, dreams of becoming a professional basketball player. At the start of the school year in September, he will join the Pôle Espoirs de Montpellier for two years in total immersion in learning, deepening and practicing his favorite sport.
In the Bely family, high level sport, we know! Audrey, the mother, practiced professional volleyball in Calais and Julien, the father, ended his career at Narbonne Volley fifteen years ago.
For son Johan, it will be basketball! At the age of 5, he made his first dribbles on the courts of the Basket club Narbonne Méditerranée (BCNM). “I’ve always loved running, scoring baskets and team spirit”says the young athlete who, at that time, was already progressing very quickly. “I started in the U7 category, and I was always outclassed by those one or two years older than me”.
An age difference that has never scared Johan. In the joy of victories as in the pain of defeats, they always stand together. “We are very close and we all get along very well”continues the basketball player who remembers, all smiles, his “48 points scored in a game in U11”and of this season in U15: “We were first undefeated, but we lost in the final. We all cried!”
A particularly intense season for Johan, with four training sessions – three as a team and one individually – per week. In October, during the departmental selection tournament in Haute-Garonne, he caught the eye of recruiters from the Pôle Espoirs. “They went to my parents to tell them they wanted me, he explains proudly. I was super happy!” Of the 220 players selected in Occitania and Paca, only 12 will remain. After six selections, the Narbonnais won the long-awaited Grail.
At the start of the school year, he will join the Pôle Espoirs du CREPS (Centre for resources of expertise and sports performance) in Montpellier, where he will have to prove himself more than ever against “players of his level”. For the sports director of the BCNM, Pascal Delaliaux, Johan has every chance. “He has a good height (1.82 m), a slender physique, a good shot… and the desire to train! He is also very collective, it is up to him to learn to be personal in the collective”.
Objective: to integrate Insep
Internal for two years, Johan will have busy weeks, with lessons at the Jeu de Mail college in the morning and training at CREPS in the afternoon, before returning to his family on the weekends. His dad, Julien, wants to be reassuring. “I have no doubts for him, it’s going to be a little weird for us, to find ourselves at three”. First supporter of his son, he knows however that it will not be easy every day: “I myself left when I was in second. The training, the fatigue, the daily competition… it’s not easy, you have to fight and you have to give a lot day by day”.
Johan’s goal: to integrate Insep, which has trained some of the greatest French basketball players. Only obligation imposed by his parents: “He must study after the baccalaureate, launches his father. Even if there’s always basketball, it’s non-negotiable! It is very important for the head and for the future”.
