But Gabi Ionescu already had the self-confidence beforehand. “If someone beats us, it must be a very strong team: top eight or even top four in the Bundesliga,” said the coach of the junior basketball team of the Oberpfalz team, nicknamed the Hunters, in a conversation with coaches ahead of the second qualifying round. “I have experience in this age group. I knew what quality we have.”
But theory and practice are often two different things in sport. Not in this case: After three clear victories in the first round, things were the same in the second round on Sunday in Kirchheim: 34 points difference in the 76:42 against Freiburg, 34 points difference in the 66:32 against the Augsburg Basketball Academy and even 44 points difference in the 99:55 against the host VfL Kirchheim/Teck, with an incredible defensive average of only 43 opponent points, meant a ticket for the Youth Bundesliga in Basketball (JBBL) in confident style.
Where the game will be played is still unclear
This means that from the beginning of October, the 2009/10 age group will be playing Bundesliga basketball in the Upper Palatinate. Where exactly is unclear: The Hunters would like to have a fixed playing and training location in Regensburg or Tegernheim, and the board has been checking this request for months – given the notoriously difficult hall situation in Regensburg, this is not easy.
Gabi Ionescu has sometimes joked about the nickname in light of the tour through Upper Palatinate in halls in Amberg, Schwandorf, Neustadt, Tegernheim and Regensburg. “We should be called Nomads rather than Hunters.” That puts a lot of pressure on parents and grandparents in terms of transport. That’s why the coach sees gratitude as the most important of the four building blocks that he demands of the players and lives by. “I am also grateful to all the caretakers in Upper Palatinate who have repeatedly opened the halls for us.” The other three building blocks are “the same rules for everyone. And we want to give the players values. I don’t dictate, but everyone has to make their own decisions. That’s where the fun comes in: At that age, they’re not professionals. We had two players who were still 13.”
The project took time – and could have been ready in 2021. At that time, the Hunters of the Oberpfalz team were also German runners-up in the cup, just like this year with the 2005/06 age group. But the season was canceled, Corona prevented a qualifying round, and all the work was in vain. “We beat Gießen back then – with a Peja Strobel from Austria, who was now in the NBA camp, where only one representative is allowed from each country,” Gabi Iones-cu tries to explain vividly how close they were.
Now it’s done – and that’s especially important in order to have “Bundesliga” status and thus finally be taken seriously in the scene. “It didn’t all happen by chance,” says Ionescu. International tournaments en masse, professional load management with an app, athletic trainers, physiotherapists, a psychology professor from the University of Regensburg – the 44-year-old graduate basketball coach from Romania approaches the matter professionally. “We attach great importance to analytics and collect data three, four, five times a day. So I don’t just judge it with the trainer’s eye.”
“Challenging well” is important
Ionescu does not believe that talent is leaving, including top scorer Justus Reintjes, who is a member of the starting five of the Bayern selection and could make the jump to the U-15 national team in the autumn at the national camp. “He only turned 14 last month. I don’t think we have to leave so early. As long as we can challenge him well, everything is fine here. He has individual training twice a week – and it’s only a five-minute bike ride to the hall.”
But the U-16 Bundesliga is not the end of the line for the Hunters, who coach 55 players born between 2009 and 2013 at various levels, as well as two female teams (U12 and U16) with 35 players. In “two or three years” Ionescu and Co. also want to tackle the U-19 Bundesliga.
Finally taken seriously: The 2009/10 class of the Oberpfalz team will play in the youth national league from October. Photo: Ionescu
2024-06-25 16:30:00
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