“Everyone calls me Maite” María Teresa Méndez Fernández, explains the coach, “María Teresa was given to me at birth but nobody knows me as Teresa or Marité, no, I am Maite for everyone”.
How did your love for basketball come about?
–My parents instilled in me the sport, because we came from a family of athletes from Ponteareas. There were few possibilities at that time in Pontevedra to practice sports at a female level. Either it was athletics or handball, otherwise there were few options, but a school basketball league arose in which I got involved as a player.
–How was the Arxil born?
–From the time I got involved in the school league in a few years we ended up playing for Mercantil, but our sporting stage was coming to an end because nobody offered us the chance to continue playing, Trisca, Cisne and some other teams disappeared. Then all the compañeras got together, that more than a team we were almost a family, and we decided to found a cluband thus the Arxil was born in August 1984.
– Were you always the coach of the club?
–Always, at first I combined it as a player but for a short time. I have always been a coach, in base or senior categories.
Do you remember the number of young women you have trained?
I don’t know exactly how many have passed through the club, but I was precisely making an estimate in case you asked me this question and We are around 4,000 players who have passed through the Arxil in these 38 years that we have been with the club. There are many people, many families, many coaches and managers who have created a large family.
What is the best part of your work at the club?
–I think it is learning, because it is common learning. I try that every year they leave with a sports learning but also coexistence, commitment to objectives, effort and concentration. That part of life and social life is a path, that of an athlete is a very important lifestyle, and it is a bet after all that makes you lose many things along the way but also gain many others.. For me, the best thing is living with young people, women, because it must be highlighted: it is an only women’s club, which has been working with girls, young people and women all this time, and that for me is the club’s greatest achievement, not just mine. .
There are around 4,000 players who have passed through the Arxil in these 38 years that we have been with the club. There are many people, many families, many coaches and managers who have created a large family.
-Women’s sport has traditionally been absent from the public sphere…
–Our education was essential for us to really coincide a group of people who were very clear that we wanted, not only to continue doing sports and showing our effort on that outing to the city, but also to offer a sports offer to the entire female part of the city that had very few possibilities. All this with a sport that we are passionate about, that we were passionate about even then, a super complete sport, and that really is a lot of fun when you have the tools to practice it. And that was our objective: we wanted to create a school for basketball, but also for life, for girls.
-How did you feel when they called you to inform you that you are the City of Pontevedra 2023?
-It was an up and down, a rise of emotions and not being able to believe it, since it was a secret that Ángela Paz and Mili Paz (from ASSEII) carried on with the people of the club in silence, they communicated it to me a week before by if you call me from the press. I knew it was going to be very complicated, I know that they worked hard on the candidacy and that it had a lot of support, which was ultimately what determined that they decided on me. There were four other people who I’m sure had much more merit than me, but I admit that when the mayor called me and told me about the award, I burst into tears, just like when they told me about my candidacy. I didn’t expect it at all nor that it came from someone outside the sport, I’m delighted, really.
