Fontajau

The need to improve the numbers in Fontajau

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For goals to come, victories are essential. Winning away is never easy and that’s why tying joys at home becomes almost a must for any team. Also for Bàsquet Girona, which so far has not been at all solid in Fontajau, where it has not just come out. The team wants to improve its performance as a local. He has only been able to beat Murcia (75-63), apart from slipping against Alicante (77-83), Castellón (72-74), Almansa (78-89) and Palma (80-83). Overtaking Levitec Huesca is currently the priority for the team led by Carles Marco. The coach has assumed that Fontajau must become a fort once and for all. “We have to try to compete better than we are doing at home. We have to be much tougher.

Waiting to recover games that have been left along the way, collecting victories during this month of January can fix the situation of a Bàsquet Girona that, ninth, is penultimate of its group, but that has just won on the court of the Castellón (82-84) and wants to prolong this positive inertia. “We had to face a strange week again, but we are adapting, as is happening throughout the season,” says Marco, recalling that the match with the Canoe that was to be played on Tuesday was postponed again. And from Huesca, he is clear. “There they beat us (90-84) and we saw that it’s a team that plays well, runs, is aggressive. If we do not match this type of rival in intensity, we will have few options to win.

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The final parquet of Fontajau is almost installed

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After a couple of temporary installations, one in February and the other in August, Fontajau is about to release the final parquet that will replace the one that was damaged a year ago due to the storm Gloria. The workers are taking advantage of these days to complete the preparations so that the work, which has cost 135,000 euros, can be premiered tomorrow taking advantage of the match between Uni and La Laguna (19.30).

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They install the final parquet in Fontajau

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The sudden rise of the Ter on Thursday 23 January 2020 at noon as a result of the effects of the storm Gloria flooded the central track and other facilities of the Fontajau pavilion with almost two meters of water. That night, the Euroleague match against Arka Gydnia had to be moved to Palau as a matter of urgency, while Uni managers began to calculate the cost of the damage. A year later, this Friday, the pavilion will open the final floor acquired by the City Council with an investment of 135,520 euros. It will be in the duel between Spar Girona and La Laguna (19.30), after two temporary surfaces, one installed last February and which was ceded by the Generalitat from Tarragona, and the other placed in the ‘August, for rent, by possibility the start of the season of Spar and Basketball Girona.

The third floor will be the final one. Yesterday began to install in Fontajau the playing surface that the City Council awarded at the end of November to the company Soluciones decorativas Ibaizabal SL, for 135,520 euros. This floor will be final, in property, and must be prepared for this Friday’s match of the Women’s League and the next day between Bàsquet Girona and Huesca (17.00). The flood damaged the previous floor of Fontajau just when it had not been half a year since the City Council had restored it with an investment of close to 45,000 euros. A total of six bids were submitted to the public tender opened by the City Council.

Throughout this year, between the flood and the opening of the new playing surface, in Fontajau there have been two temporary parquets. Three weeks after the accident, the pavilion was again ready to receive sports activity thanks to the management of the City Council with the Generalitat, which gave them a disused track they had in Tarragona. On February 15, a Girona-Albacete Basketball was played, and the next day a Uni-Perfumerías Avenida. With the pandemic the sport stopped and the ceded parquet returned. In August, before the start of this season, the City Council rented another one.

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Enough mobilizations in the pavilions this Saturday and a large rally in Fontajau on the 23rd

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Sport has said enough. It’s kind of hurt every time Procicat announces new restraints “without any support or help.” That is why the platform has been promoted from Girona It’s enough which wants to be a protest movement to recover the activity of the sector. After dozens of clubs, coaches, athletes, managers and fans from all over Catalonia have joined, the platform has convened a mobilization in front of the pavilions of each municipality this Saturday, January 9, at noon.

Among all the protests, the one of Fontajau next Saturday January 23 at 12 noon (when there is no longer municipal confinement) that will be one large unit concentration. “With the new restrictions, sport is once again the big loser. We don’t realize it, but we are harming the grassroots teams and mortgaging the future of the sport,” Spar Girona wrote in its account this morning. from Twitter.

In addition, Enough has made a manifesto on Change.org to claim that “sport is health, education and welfare,” calling for “dialogue” with government officials, the return of the public and assuring that ” we will win this match “because as they recall in the text there is no evidence to certify that” that organized sports practice is no focus of contagion or spread of the virus. ”

The manifesto

It’s enough!!! SPORT is safe !!! Enough to criminalize us

We, the undersigned (coaches, athletes, managers and / or sports fans, clubs and sports organizations), in the face of the management of the pandemic and the new measures taken by the Government of the Generalitat would like to inform you that:

Our clubs and organizations have made a great effort to make sports a safe space by adapting to the necessary regulations, investing resources in charge of the clubs. The Government does not have any study, nor any certainty, that certifies that the practice of organized sports is no focus of contagion or spread of the virus, because otherwise, we are sure that they would have made it public. On the other hand, the coaches, athletes and / or managers who are at the foot of the track know that the diagnosed cases, infections and quarantines within our teams are still testimonial and very far from that of other areas of our day to day. The same arguments that serve in education do not seem valid for indoor sports; and that a classroom is much smaller than a pavilion, and everyone knows that the ratios per classroom are not the desired ones, our full solidarity with the bodies of teachers and professors.

Given the restrictive measures taken by the Government of the Generalitat (and comparing them with those adopted in other activities such as cinemas, circuses, theaters, restaurants, trade or religious events …) we find that we are the most punished sector, without any basis, as we have stated above, and therefore criminalized. We demand that the Government listen to the voice of grassroots clubs and entities and stop prioritizing the voice of private lobbies in the world of sport (sports complexes, swimming pools, …) that only defend their business interests, far from the ‘grassroots sport and associationism that politicians so often applaud at events, when they come to visit us.

We are sure that government officials who have been implementing these restrictive measures for many months are unaware of the reality of grassroots sport and its benefits for the children of our country. We do not say, organizations like the WHO have published it in the midst of a global pandemic. We want to think that it is out of ignorance, and that these decisions are not made because grassroots sport is the ass of blows and the weakest link in our society … or is it really that ?. We do not want to believe that it is legislated thinking about who will complain more or less, or who does not have this capacity to complain, in this case, girls and boys who play sports.

Seeing how attendance at cinemas, theaters, concert halls, auditoriums, religious ceremonies, and circuses is allowed at 50 percent of its capacity, we feel bewildered and powerless at not receiving the same treatment. What could be the reason for this grievance? We never got an answer, despite asking insistently. We want dialogue, and that our members and fans can return to the pavilions in those competitions that are allowed and now have to be played without an audience, a grievance with respect to most clubs that play leagues in Spain.

These arbitrary measures and the damage that is being done to sports clubs, WITHOUT ANY SUPPORT OR HELP, are shaking and endangering one of the treasures of our country. We are still there in time, but we demand respect and feeling listened to.

Soon our country will experience new elections to the Parliament of Catalonia. Given how we have been treated, how we have been abandoned and how we have been criminalized by the Government, we want to tell you that: WE WILL NOT VOTE if you are not able to treat sport and athletes (especially children and girls) as they deserve. During the campaign we ask that you do not have the arrogance to convene political events in those facilities that close to us. If they are not used for sports, they cannot be used to be heard and applauded.

Throughout these months, despite the difficulty we know there is, and the efforts that some have made, you have ignored, ignored and despised the requests, prayers and voices of the Federations, the UFEC, as well as nothing has been the representation of EsportCat and its Secretary General. That while they have raised their voice and their complaint, they have not been heard and have been despised. That is to underestimate the whole world of sport. Now is the time to listen, loud and clear, to the voices of those of us who are on the tracks every day, with the children and young people of our country. Now is the time for those of you who wanted to be invisible and silenced.

For all these reasons that we have explained to you, we want to propose the following calls for protest:

Concentrations next Saturday, January 9 in front of all pavilions and sports venues at 12:00
Large unitary rally on January 23 in front of the Girona-Fontajau Pavilion at 12:00
Mobilization of the entire social network of the sport affected in joint actions.


Finally tell you that you can follow us on the twitter and instagram profiles @ JanhihaProu5 and that clubs, athletes, fans, clubs and sports organizations can join the manifesto that you will find on change.org: http://chng.it / YqDjNZV2
The strength of our voice can only be felt if we all go together.


We will win this match too !!!

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The return of a historian to Fontajau

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L’Spar Girona strengthens the technical body he directs Alfred Julbe, and does so with the return of a historic to Fontajau to do wizard tasks. Laura Antoja has opened her third stage at the Uni after having previously been there as a player (2009-2011) and performing functions at the ‘staff of delegate and physiotherapist in the 2014/15 academic year, when he won the first league with Roberto Íñiguez as coach. Antoja was the basis of the first two seasons in the elite, and his good role in Girona, where he had arrived from the Mann Filter, opened the door for him to sign for Perfumerías Avenida, where he retired in 2013. Now, at the age of 43, he arrives to join the technical body of ‘Alfred Julbe, who will continue to have David Muñoz and Carla Jou also as assistants, and Beti Orden (physiotherapist), Reduan Hamido (physiotherapist), Alex de la Vega (physical trainer) and Sílvia Treviño (doctor).

“I’m delighted to be here again. It’s like my house. The step to come has been a bit for that reason. The club has knocked on my door and coincided with a time when adventure fit me into my life. I really wanted to. I try to get here with very positive energies and with the desire to help unite “, explained yesterday the former player, who has already started working in Fontajau in her new task. The ex-base of Mataró has one extensive experience in the Women’s League, where he played 15 seasons from his debut with the University to the farewell in Salamanca. Apart from Uni, he also defended the shirts of L’Hospitalet, Cadí, UB Barça, Hondarribia and Rivas.

It’s been a while, as the sporting director admitted Pere Puig, who from Fontajau sighed for the return of Antoja to the club. “We are very happy, it’s a signing we had tried every summer for all that it has meant here. He can bring us many things thanks to his knowledge and his character, which connects very well with the players. He comes to play an important role, to contribute from the first minute, and to lend a hand in the physical part together with Álex de la Vega ».

Throughout its history of more than ten years in the elite, Uni Girona has had four great bases (Antoja, Noemí Jordana, Núria Martínez and Laia Palau, the latter still active). She was the first, the one who debuted in the top category in 2009 under the orders of Anna Caula, and in a team where there were, among others, Kiesha Brown, Georgina Bahí, Anna Carbó and Astou Traoré. In total he played 50 games with Uni, 26 in the first year and 24 the following season, 2010/11. Later, the 2014/15 season, as a delegate and physio, he was in the staff of the first league.

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Labuckiene stays in Fontajau

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The pivot Giedre Labuckiene was the last signing of theSpar Girona last summer. A 30-year-old, 192-centimeter Latvian pivot who had already impressed the city long before, in 2005, when he came to play an international grassroots tournament with the Vilnius BS Haribo, the Cibertel Cup, and Pere Puig, who coached the Multiópticas Solà Ceset, the name was written down. Labuckiene (formerly Giedre Paugaite, now adopted as a married woman) has offered a good performance and as a result the Uni has opted for keep her on the roster until the end of the season. Yesterday the clause by which they could cut it expired. And they didn’t execute her.

“We have decided, from the sports area, and in agreement with the coach, not to execute this clause due to his good performance. Its continuity until the end of the season is already certain. This was the only player with this cut option. Our intention is to continue with this team until the end of the season “, highlighted the sports director Pere Puig.

In the Euroleague the player is averaging 9.8 points per game and 11.3 points in 18.8 minutes on the court. In the Endesa Women’s League their numbers are 5.2 points and 4.3 rebounds in an average of 15 minutes of play.

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Fontajau released in January a final floor purchased for 135,520 euros

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The Fontajau pavilion will open the final floor in January, which will replace the one that was disabled due to the flood caused by the storm Gloria. Almost a year after that accident, which denied the central track and other units with more than a meter and a half of water, the City Council has awarded the company Soluciones decorativas Ibaizabal SL, for 135,520 euros, the final floor that will be installed in the pavilion, in property. The flood damaged the previous floor of Fontajau just when it had not been half a year since the City Council had restored it with an investment of close to 45,000 euros.

The award has been public since yesterday, although now it opens a period of fifteen days before it is final and the contract is signed. A total of six bids were submitted to the competition. Once the purchase has been initialed, the winning company will have a month and a half to proceed with the installation, which could be done in less than a week. Therefore, Spar Girona and Bàsquet Girona, the main users of the central court of Fontajau, will be able to have them at the beginning of 2021.

A year after the flood, the serious problem that was generated in Fontajau will be solved, which made the clubs fear that they would not be able to have the pavilion last season (the health crisis had not yet erupted). Initially, the City Council obtained, via the Generalitat, a parquet floor that was disused in Tarragona and three weeks after the accident, official matches were played again. Then the expansion of the coronavirus abruptly cut the leagues, and during the confinement it had been raised that the pavilion might house a field hospital, a scenario finally ruled out. The floor returned to Tarragona in the spring, and last summer another was rented to face the start of the season of Uni and Bàsquet Girona, which is still installed.

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Updated Uni-Al-Qzeres on Sunday in Fontajau by COVID

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Spar Girona had to play two games this week, after overcoming the stoppage due to national team commitments, but Al-Qázeres announced yesterday that it has several cases of coronavirus in its squad and, following the protocol, the club Extremadura has requested the suspension of Sunday’s match in Fontajau. Thus, Alfred Julbe’s Uni will only play one match this week, on Thursday in Logroño against the Promete Campus (19.00).

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“I think the Euroleague will take place in Girona, and I hope with the public in Fontajau”

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We are in a pandemic, the pavilions are closed and revenues are falling, but Spar Girona changes coach, organizes Euroleague stages … Are they brave or unconscious?
We try to be true to a philosophy and at times it may seem contradictory, but we are a club that we are used to paving the way for and that no one gives us anything. And that sometimes makes us have to make decisions that involve taking a risk. But that is the temperament of the club. We are concerned about the situation around us, but that concern will not stop us.

Will the Euroleague be played both yes and no in Fontajau?
For now, speaking of the pandemic, no one is able to make predictions. We have seen this in governments and their management of the coronavirus. We can not pretend to be futurists, but looking at the data of the last few days it seems that on the 23rd we will return to the situation before these last restrictions. In our case, this would mean being able to have an audience in the matches and, regardless of whether there is finally an audience or not, for the Euroleague to be played safely in Fontajau.

With an audience? Isn’t that being very optimistic?
Without going into optimism or pessimism, if the pandemic data continues to fall, no longer only for basketball, but also for culture or catering, I trust that we can go back to the previous measures, which limited us the capacity to a maximum of fifty percent of the capacity of the pavilion of Fontajau.

If the Euroleague can be played with the public, will it be only for Spar Girona subscribers?
In the ranking of priorities, the first is to fit all our subscribers. We were around 1,600 and with the appeal of the Euroleague we think that even some who had yet to renew or who had not decided to pay for the first time, end up doing so. Last year we reached 2,600 and therefore we still have room. But in the current pandemic situation, we also don’t want to reach the maximum number of seats we can offer, which is a little over 2,000.

In Girona, today the restrictions are very strong and in two weeks they want Fontajau to be able to see Uni play against a Russian team, an Italian team and a Latvian team. Aren’t they very daring?
I don’t know if the word is bold or truly we have no choice but to always go one step further. The club has never had it easy. I come from the experience of the masculine and truly in the feminine you have to always work twice as hard to get the same, or less. That’s the reality, but the spirit of this club is not to complain and always see what we can do to take a little step up. And this small step involves more decisions such as making summer camps in the middle of a pandemic with more than 400 participants, organizing a Euroleague bubble and, in the same vein, a decision such as dismissing the coach than for some people maybe it was a surprise. We hadn’t lost five or six games, there were no whistles in the stands … None of this had happened, but we thought we had to improve.

To be better not to win, but to be able to be viable.
We thought the way to survive was to offer a quality show. This is our eleventh season in the Women’s League-1 and at the beginning came the loyal audience of women’s basketball or others simply because of the novelty. In recent years we have had to hear many things, such as that horrible phrase that “women’s basketball is neither basketball nor women’s”; but we are at a time when we can say very proudly that we do very good basketball and that it is very feminine. We do not give up the values ​​of the club and we have to fight a lot in a complicated day to day in the middle of the pandemic.

Against Ensino, in Alfred Julbe’s first game in Fontajau, a good basketball was seen. Too bad there was no audience.
The change of direction must go beyond the match against Ensino. We look forward to a step forward in the major matches. In a couple of weeks, with the Euroleague it will be a first taste to see how the team responds with the new coach, then comes the match in Salamanca …

How do you see Julbe?
He has come with great enthusiasm and at the same time with humility to first land and then see how he can help us improve. There are details of him that I really like, for example, that this week that there was a break in the first team for the FIBA ​​commitments, he has been training with the young players who were here and with some of the second team. From Monday to Friday, every morning and afternoon.

There is a lot of talk about the show, but now in Fontajau you can’t play with the public. Does basketball make sense with the empty pavilion?
I think playing without an audience is a timely moment. In the first wave it was unfeasible to continue with the competitions if there were no bubbles like the ones the ACB did in Valencia, but what is happening now I think is a one-off event and we will soon be playing with the public again. With capacity restrictions, but with spectators because their presence is essential for us and we all look forward to the moment, whether this season or next, to see Fontajau full again until the flag.

And what would happen if on the 23rd the pavilions remain closed?
Well, if on the 23rd we are told that we must continue to play without an audience, then we will play without an audience. We will then analyze the situation and take the necessary measures.

If the restrictions are extended, membership fees must be returned to members.
Everyone is seeing that the will of the club is not to resign. From the first we negotiated with Procicat and the City Council so that the project could continue in its full sense. Obviously the issue of quotas should be raised, for now we have played a game without an audience, and at the end of the season we will see what the damage has been to the fans and if people want we will act accordingly. We hope that the matches without an audience in Fontajau will be as short as possible.

If they had to return much of the membership fees, would the club’s viability be in jeopardy?
The financial effort is so great that if we take out the fees, which, the income from ticket sales, we subtract part of the casals, have a few hundred fewer subscribers … If we add all this, we would obviously endanger the viability of the club. Nor is it a new situation and I think the future of the club is assured, but it should be seen what the competitive level would be. This year we have lowered the budget, but as the whole market has gone down we have been able to continue to make a competitive team.

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Spar Girona is working on counting that the Euroleague will be played in Fontajau

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The pandemic, its evolution and the various restrictions that governments are applying to minimize its effects make it difficult for anyone, and sports clubs are not exactly an exception, to make plans beyond a few days. But even so, in the offices of theSpar Girona in Fontajau it is worked counting that the first “bubble” of the Euroleague group stage will be played in the Girona pavilion. Six matches between Spar Girona, Italian Schia, Riga of Latvia and the great dominator of European basketball in recent years, Russian Ekaterinburg, which will be played in Fontajau in the first week of December. For now, with the current health restrictions, the matches should be played behind closed doors, but an improvement in the indicators, as is happening in recent days, opens the door to think that in three weeks the situation in Girona could have returned to what it was until recently, in which sports and cultural shows could have an audience with a reduction in capacity. This would mean that, as was the case at the beginning of the season, around 1,200 Spar Girona fans would be able to watch the matches live inside the pavilion.

For now, and that doesn’t seem to need to change, the FIBA keeps Girona as the scene of the bubble and the matches already have a day (not yet schedules). On Tuesday 1 December, Spar Girona will face Riga and Ekaterinburg will face Scchio; on Thursday 3 the Girona girls would play against the Russians, current European champions with the Americans Breanna Stewart and Britney Griner or the Mallorcan Alba Torrens, and the Schio in Riga; and on Friday 4 the matches between Ekaterinburg and Riga and Spar Girona and Schia would be played. The schedules are not yet defined, but the teams would arrive in Girona on the weekend and would be in the city for about six days.

As for the subject of the public, it seems clear that the Procicat will extend this Thursday two more weeks the current restrictions, which force all sports shows to be held behind closed doors and close theaters and cinemas. But if it then returned to the previous situation, Uni would arrive in time to allow its subscribers to enter Fontajau.

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