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Mar Segura, a 14-year-old girl in the basketball elite

It was mid-October 2005 when in Granada, a place closely linked to the Segura Díaz-Larrauri family, a then-historic milestone in Spanish basketball lived. At just 14 years and 11 months old, Ricky Rubio jumped onto the parquet floor of the Palacio de los Deportes to defend the Joventut jersey and became the youngest player to debut in the ACB. Now, 17 years later, again someone from 14 years has broken another record of precocity. This time it has not been in Spain but in the land of the Antetokounmposbut the debut has national origin again. Mar Segura, Hesperides youth squad, has become one of the youngest to debut in the Greek top flight of basketball.

Trained at EBG Málaga and Náutico de Sevilla, in August 2021 this young Andalusian base had to pack his bags and move to Greece. Daughter of the former Malaga player Beatriz Díaz-Larrauri and the national coach of Granada origin Curro Segura, his father’s work obligations – he assumed the Ionikos bench – meant that the family had to move to a land with a great basketball tradition. There, Segura began training at Cronos, whose main rival, in lower categories, is Hespérides, an Athens club with a long tradition in youth academy, especially female. And it didn’t take her long to draw the attention of her rivals.

So much so that for this season, the Hespérides, the most important Hellenic club at the female quarry level, ahead of Olympiacos and Panathinaikos, wanted to incorporate Mar Segura into their ranks. “Last year, the matches I played with my other team against Hesperides were like derbies. At the end of the season, they wanted me at this club in Athens and my brother at Olympiacos”, the young woman tells Relevo. So, again, although her father had finished his time as AEK coach -he signed for the club in March and is now looking for a new project once his relationship with Greek club last July -, after a vacation in Spain, they returned to pack their bags for Greece.

“I started training in September, on the 12th,” explains Segura, who, although he is a cadet by age, competes with the junior and combines his training with the senior. “He had only three or four training sessions with the senior. I was called up for a previous game, but I didn’t play and they called me back. summon against Olympiacos“, he continues. And that appointment, which took place on a track attached to the mythical Palace of Peace and Friendship, will never be forgotten. Almost at the end of the match, Mar Segura was lifted from her seat: it was her turn to go out on the court It was his debut in the highest category and even could having broken a record of precocity in the hellenic countryeither. Although this data could not be confirmed, what is certain is that she is one of the youngest to do so. And she did not disappoint.

“I had trained so little with the seniors that I didn’t really know what I had to do”

Safe Sea

In the minute and fifteen seconds that he was on track scored two points and although his team lost to Olympiacos (103-63), for Segura it will always be a very special game. “I was very excited. I didn’t expect it because the game was already ending. I was very excited,” confesses this young woman, who even admits that “she didn’t know what to do” when she left: “I had trained so little with the seniors that I didn’t really know what I had to do on the track, but in the end it went well. She was very happy and I didn’t care about the rest, “she admits with a laugh.

Follower of Juancho Hernangómez and the game of Real Madrid forward Gabriel Deck, “he plays very well in all aspects. He helps in everything: with the ball, without it, in defense… It’s always important”, he clarifies about the Argentine, Mar Segura continues with his training. And it is that now, playing the base role, with his 1,81 metros tall and still in growing age, seeks to settle what will be her profile as a player. Of course, without leaving aside their studies –third year of ESO– at an international school in the Greek capital.

And although his parents, well aware of what the world of the basket is, they did not want to give much importance to what happened either, “He is still very young,” assured Curro Segura In this medium, the truth is that everything points to a great future awaiting him in the future in which he can even fulfill a dream: “Representing Spain with the senior team has to be very cool“, he says. At the moment, he was already in a concentration with the U-15 team last summer, but surely his first official calls will not be long in coming.

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