There are dreams that if they are pursued, they are achieved. What at first seems like nonsense in which no one is going to follow you, sometimes ends up becoming a reality. Something like this happened to Rosana Martínez and José Miguel Prieto. From an idea that at first seemed remote, they have built one of the benchmark women’s basketball teams in Andalusia: the Beiman Basketball Seville Women.
Motivation comes a little out of necessity. his daughter, Alba Prieto, is a basketball player and at the age of 15 she had to go to Huelva to compete at the highest level. It was the only Andalusian team that was in the highest category. “It was difficult for her and for us, we didn’t want other girls and her families to go through the same thing,” says Rosana, president of the club. “We wanted the talented girls from Seville to be able to stay, plus there was a generation of players who could be lost,” she continues.
That’s where it all started. José Miguel Prieto, or Tiburón Prieto as many others will know him, is the manager of the team. He assures us that what they were looking for was “to help our girls and society”. This idea was joined by many people, among others Joseph Albert Pesqueraand together with Beiman, its main sponsor, main and institutional collaborators, suppliers and other sponsors, four years ago this dream began, which, little by little, continues to grow.
The League 2 experience
After two years in the National League 1 (LN1), the Beiman Basketball Sevilla Women managed to be promoted and play the 2020-2021 season in League 2. “When you go up to a league in which you have never played everything is new. It seems unbelievable that the sport is the same, but when it comes to competing everything is different”, explains one of the team’s oldest players, Virginia Pizarro, nicknamed MVirP (for the quality of her game), who assures that in the end of the matches ended up exhausted from the effort. This fact is explained by the coach, Fernando Planelles, who assures that last year “we had very big physical differences and they weighed us down mentally”.
“We have had the misfortune that It was a very difficult year because of the pandemic. We couldn’t hire people from outside, we had to invest a lot of money in measures against Covid, etc. Despite that, the girls competed at a very high level. What’s more, we fell by the basket average with a team from another group, this one being much lower than us”, explain Rosana and José Miguel Prieto, who assure that “we feel very proud of the work we did last year”. So much so that they continued to trust Planelles, who is grateful to the club for letting him know “and they have always shown me that they have been supporting us”.
In fact, Claudia Jiménez, the youngest player in the senior team at 15 years old and a cadet, assures that “the team’s attitude has surprised me because after relegation we all arrived with the energy to go back up”. And so it is. The Sevillanas have competed in a spectacular regular phase, winning all the games, including some with differences of up to 60-70 points. It can be said that there are no words to describe how this team has managed to overcome. “Perhaps the improvement in results comes more from the collective. We have improved our attitude and our predisposition to work without thinking too much about the situations or difficulties that we may or may not encounter. We focus more on the work that we have to do and on what depends on us,” says Planelles.
Similarly, Captain Virginia assures that “trust does a lot. This year we have a lot of faith in ourselves and what we can achieve. Confidence is very high and this gives you a plus when it comes to facing matches”. Another aspect that has helped improve the Sevillian team, and in which all the protagonists agree, is the experience. Rosana assures that this has been “a very important point. Having been in League 2 last year, having lost so many games… I think that you learn much more by losing than by winning. All that experience is the big difference compared to last year.”
New blood
Another tool that has also helped the team, and it is no less important, is its players, how well-integrated they are, how well the new additions have adapted and, furthermore, it has been proven that the youth academy is really working. An example of the latter is the 15-year-old Claudia Jiménez. She combines her studies with training with the cadet and senior teams, and she is so talented and cheeky when it comes to playing that the age difference with her teammates is practically non-existent during the game. She herself assures the good atmosphere that exists and the camaraderie that emerges: “They have treated me great from the first moment. They are always willing to help me in anything.”
In this way, this season they have looked for a way to strengthen that pineapple that has to be a locker room, celebrating the 100 points in the game in a way because, as Virginia says, “you always need your teammates to be with you because when the locker room is united it shows. All of this has an impact on the game and the results of the team”.
ascent phase
“Now we have the most beautiful”, assures MVirP referring to the fight for the title and the promotion phase. After an unblemished regular phase, they continue to be unbeaten, even sweeping the qualifying match for the final four against DKV Jerez. In this way, the hopes of winning the title remain intact, despite the fact that the entire club carries caution as a flag. They do not forget the motto that has led them to be where they are: “Game by game”. “At any time they can surprise us but we hope to be prepared for this moment,” says Claudia.
“We cannot go from being like we were last year to thinking that this year we are the best on the planet”, continues Rosana, that is why they want keep your feet on the ground. They have worked hard at all levels to get here, and now they want to enjoy the process. “In the end we are very excited, we will get to the games like this”, says Virginia, because, as Claudia continues, “we face the promotion phase with good expectations because we have had very good weeks and games but we continue with the mentality from game to game” .
For his part, Planelles says that “we will try keep doing the things that have worked for us and that they are giving us results. It is a different circumstance but we will have to face it with the intensity that it requires and with the confidence that everyone will want to beat us. We have a very strong level”.
The importance of the hobby
Fans They are a very important factor in any team. In this Beiman fight it was not going to be less. “Now the most competitive matches are coming, the matches in which you risk everything you have worked for all season, what I would ask you is to accompany us as much as possible in this last phase”, affirms the captain. They want Amate, a pavilion with a lot of history, because there the mythical Caja San Fernando got promotion, as Rosana affirms, to be a hive, that they come to see them and support them in the most exciting part of the competition, so that the whole club feels , especially the players, that “what they are doing influences people and we would very much like that to be the case”, as Prieto mentions. They need a hobby that has been supporting them and from which “they feel very proud” as confirmed by Fernando Planelles, who goes on to say that “our mouths fill up so much when we talk about the inclusion of women, about equality. That they come to see it, so they will discover that there are not many differences beyond the physical ones with men”.
The LN1 title and getting promoted would be the flourish to a season of effort, work, changes and improvements, but in which there have also been difficulties. They claim to be ready to fight in a higher category, they have talent, desire and experience and Beiman Baloncesto Sevilla wants to prove it.
‘Tiburón’ Prieto, from the soccer ball to the basketball
José Miguel Prieto spent his sports career with a soccer ball at his feet. Raised in the lower categories of Albacete Balompié, in 1989 he would head to Seville to be a member of the Nervión club until 2003, the year he retired. What’s more, “when I finished playing I got the title of coach directly. I have been working in schools and even started a club. I was doing things related to football, but I also had my training as a psychologist. Sports psychology has taken me to places where I never thought or imagined I would be,” he says. One of those places has been basketball. He himself acknowledges that if he had been told that he would end up as a manager in a basketball club, it would have been very difficult for him to believe it, but that at the Sevilla Basketball Club “I have found a way to develop myself together with my wife and a close group of people who we thought was the place where our efforts could be rewarded.
