About Slovenia

Slovenia U16 coaches believe in youth international competition

Head Coach, Damir Grgić, and Assistant Coach, Sašo Rebernik, gave some insight into their plans for the summer and future of Slovenia women's youth basketball:

Their U16 national team started its official preparation for this summer's Div B championships with the tournament in Violaines at the end of May and have had a further 30 days of training and competition with matches against Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and Ireland, just to name a few.

The objectives of their Federation are not so much about winning but more about exposing young players so that these can hopefully develop into good senior players capable of seriously competing internationally and at top club level. These are reasons why the Federation feels it is important for their junior teams to attend international tournaments in order to experience different styles of basketball.

The competition in Violaines was interesting because of the number of matches played and the different age groups. The Slovenian squad is quite young and playing against U18/U19 teams and against other national U16 teams was a valuable experience even though their final placing was lower than expected. They lost by 1-point to Quebec on the very last play of the match and their match with Belgium was good but once again they lost out in the dying seconds. Those close results gave the players first-hand knowledge about concentration so they should now understand when their coaches work on it on training.

The Slovenian Federation is beginning to focus more on their youth international female teams and is steadily bridging the gap to European nations in Div A. This focus was highlighted recently  when the Slovenia basketball federation hosted the first FIBA Europe International basketball Camp for U15 girls 3 weeks ago in Postojna.

In the coaches' opinion the youth championships are very important for the development of Slovenian women's basketball. They are hoping that either the U16 or U18 team will gain promotion to Division A. If this was to happen it would be a big reward not only for the national coaches but also for all the people working in women's basketball.