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Photo: E. Šemiotas
Photo E. Šemiotas
The modest number of clubs in the Lithuanian Women’s League may be further reduced in the coming season.
In Division A of the 2019-2020 Women’s League, 5 teams competed, but according to BasketNews.lt, there is a great threat that Šiauliai will not be among them in the next season.
If this happened, there would only be four teams left in the championship: Vilnius “Kibirkštis-VKM”, the club support team “Kibirkštis-MRU”, Klaipėda “Neptūnas” and Kaunas “Aistės-LSMU”. No Division B team intends to advance to a higher level.
Šiauliai would leave the league due to financial difficulties and a lack of local players. According to the team’s director, Mindaugas Stankevičius, for the club to start next season, it would take between 60 and 70 thousand. However, currently the team only has 13 thousand euros in the account, which remain from the support of the municipality for all of 2020 (the municipality assigned a total of 27 thousand euros).
“The city’s support for the club has never been high. Regardless of what has been named, they are not enough to form a serious team, Stankevičius said on the BasketNews.lt website. – The worst thing for us is that we don’t have local players. There are now a maximum of two capable local basketball players and the rest of the team must be purchased. It would be helpful to have a solid sports school and now we don’t have groups of girls born in 2002 and 2003. They are the ones who could play now. Therefore, everything must be bought, and then the apartments must be rented, good wages must be paid.
Players born in 2004 are not yet at a level where we are allowed to reach that level. The only Rusnė Augustinaitė could play, who was also one of our leaders this season, but she plans to go to the United States. And we have nothing more to invite from girls born in 2004. You have to wait a bit. The best option would be to wait for this generation to take over before we can let at least 5-6 local girls in and strengthen from other cities. Then I would pay to participate, and now I would buy again. ”
Stankevičius makes no secret that at this moment he has big doubts that next season “Šiauliai” will play in the Women’s League. According to him, the club would be interested in the game only in Division A, and there are not enough funds for that at the moment.
Gintaras Šiuparys photo
To start next season, Šiauliai has to collect around 50 thousand sponsors. But this will not be an easy task.
“Believe me, it is very difficult to collect such an amount. Now the businessman gives 1-3 thousand and it is already a lot of money, and throw tens of thousands … Have something for those 50 thousand euros to offer. You must create a good product. The teams of the Women’s League also participate in the Baltic League, how many of those broadcasts on television, the attendance of the audience, who plays … We need to create a good product, but little by little we are moving towards that. The league and the federation are trying, “added the head of the Šiauliai women’s team.
There have been many examples in Lithuania where teams fell apart due to a lack of local players. Such teams include the Kaunas Hoptrans-Sirenas district, Marijampolė Sūduva, Utena and Ukmergė Vilkmergė.
“There is no base, there are no local players who come to fill the clubs. These are budgets for non-men’s clubs so you have the right amount and can invite ready-made basketball players. This is not the case with the girls. And they don’t play out of gratitude either, there are also appropriate conditions, “said Stankevičius.
Giedrius Gustas, director of the Women’s League, is not yet considering the option that only four clubs can remain in the championship.
“We have planned visits to the mayor of Šiauliai, Artūras Visockas. We will meet him and then the situation will be clarified. We spoke to the mayors before each season, and the mayor of Šiauliai had mentioned that he is not interested in short-term projects, only interested in long-term projects We hope that the mayor and the city of Šiauliai keep their words and that the team remains as it was, or with even more funds.
Anyway, next season’s championship will start. We didn’t even consider leaving four teams. Šiauliai is a very important part of the league, the women’s team is also part of the men’s pyramid. In any case, we also play in the Baltic League, and we can have 8-9 teams with him, “Gustas told BasketNews.lt.
The league director noted that the number of Division A teams was planned to increase to 6-7 from next season, but the coronavirus has adjusted his plans: he is likely to return to this plan by serving the 2021-2022 season in next place.
Aistė-LSMU photo
The Kaunas Aistiai-LSMU team is also concerned about the upcoming season. The club, which has shown excellent results in recent years, currently does not know what support it can receive from Kaunas City Municipality for 2020.
The strongest team in the country has already surpassed the bill with 30 thousand euros, and the remaining amount of uncertainty was caused by the coronavirus. Last year, the club received 105,000. euros
Due to the coronavirus, the municipality of Kaunas has taken an extraordinary step: it provided support to all organizations not throughout the year, but only during part of the 2019-2020 season. The remaining support for the team will be decided this summer.
“Currently the mood is sad because we are eagerly awaiting the city’s decision on additional financing for the 2020-2021 season,” said Petras Aleksonis, director of Aisčių-LSMU. – At the moment, we cannot execute the team’s work smoothly because we do not know the budget number.
Of course, we are talking to the private sector about the prospects of contributing to the club’s well-being in the 2020-2021 season, but this problem remains sensitive and uncertain, as it is understood that companies and their managers need time to identify the situation. financial situation and accurately assess your participation. . The goals of the club, the opportunity to compete for the highest prizes, the opportunity to have a promising player on the team are also important to the sponsors.
We believe that we will be able to delight club and women’s basketball fans as soon as possible by announcing our clear prospects for the new season. We would like to continue to maintain a competitive team that would delight in sports results in the arenas. For the women’s league and for women’s basketball as a whole, the loss of at least one team would have an immeasurable negative impact that would take several years to restore. Personally, I can’t imagine a superior league with, say, three clubs. We always had 7-8 clubs in vision with the new league leaders. “
Kaunas’ team won the Lithuanian championship title in the past two seasons, triumphed twice in the Queen’s Cup and remained in second place in the Baltic League for two seasons in a row.
Mindaugas Šivickas, head of the sports department of the municipality of Kaunas, said that the city is satisfied with the club’s sports results and that the coronavirus determined the change in the financing procedure.
“Generally, we finance for the budget year, but now we face so much uncertainty about what will happen to the city’s finances.” Keep in mind that city finances depend on personal income tax collected from the budget. We will see what the economy will look like after quarantine, it is difficult to say, so the decision was made to finance only last season.
We are now talking about the renewal of the Kaunas Initiative program and a new call will be announced. At some point in the summer this will be addressed. Funding for other team members, all participants in the Kaunas Initiative program, was suspended after the start of the quarantine. Either no contracts are signed or the execution is frozen because we are waiting for what will happen. It is unclear how long the shutdown will continue. Therefore, the financing of women’s basketball will be decided again, “Šivickas told the” BasketNews.lt “website.
Aleksonis, the director of Aisčių-LSMU, hopes that fans can continue to enjoy the team’s results, but emphasizes that the funds should be viewed more responsibly.
“I deeply believe that the problems of women’s basketball clubs will also be analyzed at the state level. For me, as a representative of women’s sports, it is important that women’s sports, in this case basketball, are not marginalized. It is a sport Olympic.
Therefore, we, the clubs, the Women’s League, the Lithuanian Basketball Federation, must at least maintain what we have been building and working on for several years. The situation is extraordinary, but it is being resolved. “
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