Alba’s youth work is considered special because it not only promotes the top, but also invests broadly and has thus changed basketball. But now other clubs are catching up. By Shea Westhoff
The dazzling graduates of the Alba School have been numerous in the past: Moritz and Franz Wagner, now NBA players for the Orlando Magic, Niels Giffey, who celebrated the 2023 World Cup title together with the Wagner brothers, and Tim Schneider, to name just one to name a few.
How has the club managed to develop such a key position among young talent?
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Chance reigns in fringe sports
The fact that the club was able to present promising young talent so reliably is also so remarkable because chance actually seems to rule in fringe sports: Whether talented young talent decides on a particular discipline is largely haphazard in this country. For example, it depends on whether there is even a corresponding club offer locally. Or which region you grow up in. Or whether the teacher at school can get the students interested in a particular sport.
Henning Harnisch experienced this too. The now 55-year-old won the European Championship with the national team in 1993 and later rose to the management team at Alba Berlin. But the fact that he got into basketball at all was, as he says, partly due to the fact that he grew up in Upper Hesse, a region in which the Americans stationed there were present with their beloved basketball. What there were also: three teachers at his school “who worked hard to pass on basketball,” says Harnisch. It was “luck,” says Harnisch.
“You could accept it and say: That’s how it works. But you can also ask yourself: What was there back then?” Harnisch wanted to minimize the “coincidence” factor, at least in Berlin.
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More than 1,500 children with player passes
In 2004, Harnisch became team manager at Alba Berlin and the following year suggested something seemingly absurd: Alba should no longer only promote talent at the top – until then there was a cooperation with TuS Lichterfelde, where promising talents were recommended for a commitment to Alba Berlin could. But: “The question was, why don’t we build it up ourselves from the bottom up? Immediately with the idea: School is a key. All children are at primary schools, we want to start there.”
Starting from Prenzlauer Berg, where the club was based, which was largely uninterested in basketball at the time, the plan was to network, form partnerships with schools and stretch a new, more professional basketball network across Berlin.
The project began in the 2005/2006 season with a school team of 15 children, trained by two coaches. And today? “We have over 100 coaches, 90 teams, over 1,500 children who have a player pass,” says Marius Huth, who has been there since the early years and, among other things, trained the Wagner brothers in their youth.
“It’s actually crazy how this all developed,” said Huth.
School club teams are key
Can be observed at the elementary school on Kollwitzplatz, for example. Stephanie Süß is just cranking the baskets in the sports hall down from 3.05m to child-friendly 2.60m. Around her, 12 girls scurry across the floor, playing catch while dribbling small basketballs. Süß coordinates the female mini-area between the ages of seven and 14 and trains several so-called school club teams.
The basic idea behind these teams: “The kids have the opportunity to play basketball straight after class and don’t have to leave school and travel long distances to do so,” says Süß. Such school teams also take part in regular games.
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“We’ve seen that it can work”
The broad-based youth system costs around three and a half million euros per year, an enormous sum. According to the association, this is financed by sponsors, foundations and money from the Senate administration. And if that’s not enough, Alba’s professional business will add funds.
Professionals like Malte Delow – now a seasoned professional at Alba – show that this can work. The then 12-year-old Delow from the north of Berlin had previously had little to do with basketball; his passion was football. He then took part in a trial training course for students offered by Alba – and became interested in the sport with the orange leather. The now 22-year-old went through all the junior positions at Alba and most recently made his way into the Lok Bernau cooperation team.
As a youth player, he received additional motivation from the knowledge that the transition between youth and professionals in Berlin is permeable: “It’s always easy to say: ‘We want to promote the youth’, but when no one from the youth plays for the professionals “, then you think to yourself: ‘OK, that doesn’t seem so ambitious,'” reports the winger. “And here I already had Moritz Wagner, Franz Wagner and of course Jonas (note: Mattisseck) and Tim (Schneider) in front of me, where you saw that it can work and you can use them as a guide.”
Rostock with more youth players
But in the here and now, Alba faces major challenges. Structurally, something seems to be slipping. In the ranking of the 100 largest basketball clubs compiled by the German Basketball Association (DBB), Alba is no longer in first place for the first time in years. The ranking measures the number of participant passes – including the players registered in school competitions. The number is declining at Alba.
The Rostock Seawolves, who lead this ranking, have now passed the capital club [dbb.de]. Is Alba now weakening when it comes to the flagship model of youth work?
When asked, Alba referred to the “infrastructural needs” in Berlin: “We lack hall time to accommodate more children and young people in the club.” However, the importance of youth work remains unchanged.
The club also emphasizes that, regardless of the young players registered to play, it gets around 15,000 children active every week through “numerous daycare and school cooperations”. This is still “unique” for a professional club in Germany.
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Other clubs are catching up
In fact, it is already a legacy of Alba Berlin to give the capital’s youngest dribblers professional access to the basketball ball at a very low threshold.
But because the strongest players in the professional squad quite reliably migrate to richer clubs and more financially powerful leagues, the youth department could potentially be faced with the full-fledged task of supplying the professionals with new top talent as quickly and urgently as they come of age.
Because in the glamorous Euroleague the connection to the playoff aspirants seems to have already been lost, Alba is in last place there. And in the league (eight wins, four defeats), in addition to the usual suspects like FC Bayern Munich and Ratiopharm Ulm, other clubs that weren’t necessarily on the cards before, like Würzburg, Chemnitz or Rostock, seem to be catching up.
After all, the club proved a good 18 years ago that they have a nose for promising new concepts.
Broadcast: rbb24 Inforadio, December 9th, 2023, 2:20 p.m
2024-01-14 10:47:51
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