During the play-off match of the women’s Serie B basketball between Basket Roma and Panthers Roseto (played yesterday at PalaSojourner in Rieti) a player from the Roman team was slapped by her coach.
The fact
We are at the end of the second quarter of the game, when one of the Basket Roma players (a 17-year-old girl) misses a shot under the basket. The mistake sparked the anger of the coach Luciano Bongiorno (51) who lashed out at the player. Reproaches, she screams, waving her arms and finally a violent slap on the back of her neck.
The reaction
The FIP (Italian Basketball Federation) through the words of President Giovanni Petrucci condemned the incident: “Violence is execrable and does not belong to our sport and our culture. We condemn without hesitation what happened: slapping your own athlete is never justifiable and it does not belong to sport, to basketball and to my way of conceiving it. This gesture disqualifies those who have done it, both as a person and as a coach. Respect must be at the first place in the values of those who play sports, especially in relationships between coaches and players, because educating means understanding. I dutifully activated the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. “
The coach’s gesture taken from smartphones sparked the reaction on social media with many asking for the coach to be removed. The Angelita Anti-violence Center of Rieti and the Difference Woman association also took part.
The press release of the company
Basket Roma intervened with a statement on the incident. Here is the text: “Regarding what happened during the women’s Serie B match between Basket Roma and Panthers Roseto, the Basket Roma company considers the gesture that can be seen in the images that are making the rounds of the web a deplorable gesture that it does not make part of the way we educate and train all our kids and apologize for what happened, first of all with the athlete and his family, whose privacy we ask to respect. We want to emphasize that this episode, which occurred in a moment of agonistic tension should have been managed differently as it is right for those of us who must have as their first objective the respect and teaching of important values such as verbal and even less physical “non-violence”. “I was the protagonist of an unpleasant episode and I apologize for what happened – so Luciano Bongiorno – I have known the athlete in question since he was 6 years old and I entered the field at a standstill to encourage her, with a corp language or too violent and making a gesture that from the images appears different from what it actually was, or a pat on the tail of the hair; there was no different intent, no intention to hit her in any way. I’ve been a coach for 32 years and nothing like this has ever happened to me. Basket Roma is a healthy society that respects certain values and is completely extraneous to such attitudes. ” We would like to report the message that Patrizia Pacifici, mother of the athlete involved, wrote of her own free will in private to the “panthers.roseto” profile: “I am very saddened by the fact that the images of yesterday’s episode are making the rounds of the web. My daughter is very quiet, and that’s what she matters to me. We have known Luciano since he was 6, the age at which he started the minibasket business, we have an excellent relationship and he is like a second dad for my daughter. at the end of the match with Luciano we discussed what happened, agreeing that they are not beautiful gestures to look at, and can be misunderstood by those who do not know the relationship between us. I also specify, having been present at the meeting, that it was not a slap but a pat on the tail. So I would ask you to stop this media storm that does not benefit anyone ”. In conclusion, we renew our regret for what happened. Basket Rome Asd
