Women Basketball Development: Sport tourism

Today I want to refer to a topic that doesn’t really relate to training process. However I think that it is a part of our job when we are occupied with young boys and girls. I believe that besides the knowledge we offer via trainings, we should give them images and experience from teams and cities away from our home. I owe a lot to my first team in which I was playing, because it organized every year a trip for friendly games and arranged the pre-seasonal preparation to take place in an athletic centre outside Thessaloniki. They were my first sport experiences from basketball teams and players away from my city and my first journeys without my parents.

Inevitably, I have tried to apply this mentality to the teams/boards in which I have worked. I usually take over a team at the end of May and persuade the parents for the necessity of the pre-seasonal preparation away from our city. Most of the athletic centre are in ideal sites and if you book early, you can pay lower prices. On the other hand, the team’s connection is accomplished better and the players’ attitude is more positive at the start of the season. Believe me, the majority of parents finds this idea excellent and I did not have problems about organizing this activity except for some families which had economics problems. In these cases, my opinion is to quit the idea, because in a preparation we must have all the athletes.

An easier way to organize a trip is the participation in a tournament or a journey to a city where you have found one team or more for friendly games. It is a piece of cake most of the times, because you can easily find a team via the web. The trip can take place in a period "off the season" or during a game break. Finally, because of the low cost airlines you can think about a journey abroad.