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Netta Abugov hopes to make historical past.
The chairwoman of Hapoel Lev Jerusalem – tall, blonde, and manicured, with an infectious smile – Abugov is on a mission to empower girls to play basketball.
“Each younger boy thinks he’s LeBron James. He doesn’t know learn how to bounce the ball however thinks he’s LeBron. And a lady the identical age, who is de facto gifted, doesn’t suppose she will be able to even be one thing,” Abugov says over morning espresso at Café Shemesh, a media business favourite.
“The problem that I face because the chief of this membership is to harness the expertise, to get folks to affix.”
Three years in the past, Abugov began the Hapoel Lev basketball membership for ladies in Jerusalem – “the middle of Israel, the middle of the world,” she says. It already has greater than 500 gamers.
However the basketball aficionado doesn’t come from the sports activities world. Abugov has a doctorate in Yiddish; she studied in Antwerp and obtained a tenured observe place at Bar-Ilan College. However simply when she was at a turning level in her profession, she determined she needed to do one thing completely different.
Round that point, her daughter, Tenne (her identify means “the basket that holds Shavuot first fruits,” Abugov explains fondly), began enjoying basketball for the boys’ crew in Kfar Oranim, the place they lived, as a result of there was no ladies’ crew.
“I noticed what number of challenges there are for feminine gamers” in Israel and the world, her mom says.
Serving to ladies play basketball
BECAUSE TENNE was a lady, she was banned from enjoying in video games in opposition to spiritual boys’ groups. By the top of the season, she had been allowed to take part in solely half of the video games – 9 out of 18.
“I perceive, you understand – no one wants to clarify to me how delicate these items are,” Abugov says. In spite of everything, her diploma was in ultra-Orthodox Yiddish. “However I anticipated the Israeli Basketball Affiliation to do one thing. I anticipated the opposite crew to seek out the answer and say, ‘Okay, now we have these 4 or 5 gamers whose mother and father agree’ – simply one thing.”
Her daughter was annoyed, so her mom inspired her to put in writing a letter to then-culture and sport minister Miri Regev, which she did. However for months, there was no response. So Abugov posted the letter on-line and wrote what turned a viral social media submit – and the remainder is historical past.
“I already retired from educational life; I didn’t depart academia for basketball,” Abugov explains. “First I mentioned, ‘Okay, I’m not in my 100% – that’s not 100% what I would like.’ So, I left my Yiddish scholarship.” She took these in-between years, doing issues like “enjoying bouzouki [a Greek instrument], swimming, and portray,” she smiles wryly. “After which I noticed what was occurring – and Tenne’s case actually gave me a lift – so I delved into ladies’ basketball.”
SHE JOINED the Hapoel Gilboa/Maa’inan basketball membership, the place her son performed on the time, “as a result of I actually thought there was potential.”
Inside two years, with Abugov as a sponsor and chairwoman of the ladies’s crew, they certified for the Premier League. However the native council determined it might not present the funds required for the ladies to play within the high league.
“I skilled the glass ceiling that has been constructed within the business,” she remembers. “I left broken-hearted.”
In the meantime, she was on the lookout for someplace for her daughter to maintain enjoying, they usually discovered a possibility on the YMCA in Jerusalem – the place Rebecca Ross, who had been one among Abugov’s gamers, was teaching. Tenne enrolled there, and her mom would cheer her on on the video games.
Finally, Ross and Abugov determined to open a membership collectively and based Hapoel Lev Jerusalem. In the present day, it’s the largest membership within the Jerusalem space and one of many largest within the nation.
“For me, it was clear that I’m the pinnacle. I care for all of the technique,” Abugov says. “I put down all of the cables, created the ground, after which let those who know basketball do the basketball. My position is to verify the sky is obvious.”
“Rebecca is my companion,” she says. “She is answerable for all of the skilled points. We work collectively, and it’s cherry-picking to seek out the fitting folks to affix and do it along with us.”
SHE DESCRIBES the membership as each a pyramid and a ball.
A pyramid: “It’s huge. We now have neighborhood groups, beginner groups at colleges, neighborhood facilities for folks with particular wants, at-risk youth, girls, youngsters, Orthodox, Arabs, secular, no matter is Jerusalem. We need to attain as many gamers as attainable.
“Jerusalem is a really complicated, difficult, essential place. That is the microcosm of Israel.”
The highest of the pyramid is the aggressive groups that take part in competitions. At younger ages, they compete within the native space, Eleventh- and Twelfth-graders compete with all of the groups in Israel, and the identical goes for the ladies’s crew.
A ball – a spherical membership: “We attempt to embrace all the things as a result of it isn’t an after-school exercise,” Abugov says. “When a lady involves play basketball, it’s her residence. It’s not solely her residence; it’s her household’s residence. That is her house, that is her time; that is her alternative to work together with others, to do one thing that she likes to do.” Even the membership’s photographer buys into its mission.
That is very true now, the membership co-founder says – that means since Oct. 7.
“I at all times take into consideration my position on this catastrophe that we nonetheless reside in,” Abugov muses. “What’s our responsibility as a membership at the moment? It was apparent to me in a short time: After two weeks, we returned to enjoying. There have been nonetheless restrictions for sirens – and if it was a secure place, when the primary alternative got here that we may return to having our exercise, that’s what we did.”
She says that whereas mother and father had been initially nervous, they rapidly realized how very important basketball was – for his or her youngsters and themselves.
“You need your youngsters to reside. I’m not even utilizing an adverb” to explain how: “You simply need them to reside,” Abugov says, tears welling up within the nook of her eyes.
She says it was robust to start out enjoying once more with the hostages nonetheless in Gaza and the troopers preventing, together with her son. At first, she thought, “This nation is in hell, and we’re enjoying basketball.” However then she realized, “That is life, and that is what my son and his mates and everybody’s little children are preventing for – so we are able to play basketball.”
THE DAY after Abugov met with us, her crew gained the semi-final in opposition to Hapoel Rishon Lezion, reaching the State Cup ultimate – a crew that had simply joined the Premier League this 12 months. Ending because the league’s No. 2 in what looks like lightning pace, they had been slated to compete for the win in opposition to the No. 1, the mighty Elitzur Ramla, on March 7.
Plans are within the offing to inform the world about Hapoel Lev Jerusalem, with merchandise (suppose jerseys, mugs, and key chains) and feminine influencer/ambassadors.
However it isn’t nearly medals for Abugov. No, she has a imaginative and prescient for making Jerusalem, Israel, and the individuals who reside right here higher, to present them higher lives.
“What I need to have is a Jerusalem event for youth groups – ladies – from everywhere in the world coming to Jerusalem, spending time collectively – three or 4 days – in workshops, interacting with one another,” the ladies’s basketball promoter says. “Morocco, Turkey – I don’t know. We now have to look additional than the place we at the moment are.
“It’s referred to as hope,” she concludes. “We now have to see and imagine in that hope.”■
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