Women’ basket: a dream for victory

Published: 2008 - October/November, Sport

A hidden world made of passion and will to recover. A world not lit by the spotlights of television contracts, billionaire sponsoring, crowds of screaming fans. It is the world of the so called “minor sports”, those that on Sundays are not mentioned by the television programs or on Mondays on sports papers, but just few lines on pages of teletext or of the few minutes dedicated to them in the newscasts of some small private network. Hockey, handball, track and field, but especially women sports, basketball as well as soccer or as the British call it, ‘football’. Sports considered minors, whose players are considered amateurs; yet they train, sweat, and toil just their more famous male colleagues. Much depends from the sport culture of our country, rotating around men’s soccer, basketball and volleyball; much from regulations preventing sports like women’s basketball to make a quality leap forward such to bring the level of interest like in the American one. America, with its WNBA championships, its sports franchises enjoying the same following of the men’s, whose players, just like their male counterparts, wear the Olympic gold around their necks.
50 years old, women’ basketball coach since 1976, expert connoisseur of the basketball world. And considered one of the most prepared coach and expert of the Italian women’s world of sport, Massimo Riga, current coach of the Reyer Venezia Women’s team, tells about the twenty years spent between parquet floors and sweat, practicing aimed at bringing our homemade basketball world closer to the American women professional championship.
“It is a problem of mentality – starts-off Riga – tied to the culture of sport conveyed to youth. In America sport is integral part of education; in a huge base of potential athletes, the champions of tomorrow are selected, schools, with incentives, scholarships, and promotions, allow becoming athletes while learning and training. There is a huge exchange between different people, the possibility of tailor-fitting  to every athlete a program that will develop qualities and techniques; for the whites, technique and tactics, for the Afro-Americans explosiveness and physical contact. The whole of these programs allows the United States to reach such levels to impose strong handicaps to other nations.”
An unbridgeable gap, a sea not crossable like the ocean. This is what seems to emerge from the words of Massimo Riga: “Federated organizations and American rules impose to the most famous men’s teams, economic and organizational contributions. The federation imposes the use of the same sport’s building to the two teams which, although with different names, in fact belong to the same organizational structure. The Men’s NBA championship is played from September through May, the Women’s from May through September.”
In America women’s games are followed by audiences of 15,000 spectators, while in Italy the cases in which fans not more than 200 are frequent. In the USA, during the WNBA championship, the commentators are the caliber of James, O’ Neal, Briant, who lend their voices to their female colleagues during game times. The sponsors are the same, and television coverage and sports rights are the same as in the NBA.
“In Italy this does not happen, and, in addition, federal rules prevent us from relying too much on enrolment of Americans during the break in their championships. Every Italian franchise cannot have more than two non-EU visas and this is a restriction against the coming of talents.”
To think of a female player  amongst the strongest in the world coming to Italy can prompt the thinking of a one-way  “import”  operation of  training systems, technique and sport experience. Massimo Riga points out: “everyone thinks that a WNBA player arrives in Italy only for money or to teach practice  methods. Actually things are different. Contrary to  a country where playing basket is based on physical contact and spectacular numbers, in Italy we teach tactics. Anyone coming here goes back to her own country with a bigger baggage.” As reminded by Massimo Riga, in more than in one occasion, American coaches called in Italy to explain the practicing techniques, have shown to the Italian coaches  how to get the players to do a “weave!”
What brings  an American female player in a European team? Based on the huge investments made in the women basketball to reach the competitive level achieved by countries like Russia and Spain, even and especially for youth, the result  is not always positive. “On one hand sport culture, passion even during practices, strong of the fact that if fired, the franchise could not request other visas, pressure for pay increases or firing of coaches.”
It’s a different sport culture and a different organization, but it’s the same passion and desire to win. Italy is doing something; it does it in small steps at the time, like a child held by the hands of the father to prevent falls. Far from America, it tightly holds the hands of fathers like Massimo Riga, guiding the small steps with passion and perseverance, helping it to stand up after each fall, smiling when on the parquet floor of the WNBA sees the very Italian Raffaella Masciardi playing with the jerseys of the Los Angeles Sparks. And dreaming, like Massimo Riga does, to cross the ocean together with the girls of the national women basketball team,  that ocean called Atlantic. Ready to challenge the world champions, ready to challenge their very same dream to be in the eyes of the world’s true athletes.