SIBUR inaugurated the fifth season of its nation-wide Basketball School project in Tobolsk
1 june 2021
Tobolsk has hosted a kick-off of the fifth season of SIBUR’s Basketball School, a social project that brings on board star mentors seeking to support children's and youth basketball across the nation. The project’s list of events included a round of selection trials targeting the city’s budding athletes. The round’s winners were extended invitations to attend a basketball camp where training sessions will be conducted under the guidance of Russia’s top coaches. In addition to the selection trials, Tobolsk hosted a concurrent SIBUR’s Educational Module for coaches and physical education teachers.
SIBUR's nationwide social project’s mission is to support junior athletes by providing them with an opportunity to have their proficiency level properly evaluated and to make themselves better known. Additionally, it serves to help improve the skills of coaching talents in the regions while offering them access to the state-of-the-art training methodologies. Over the four seasons that SIBUR’s Basketball School has been around, 4,133 young athletes have attended its sessions. In 2018-2019, 840 coaches received training as part of SIBUR’s Educational Module.
The current selection trials were organized for adolescents born in 2006-2007 and 2008-2009, out of whom three basketball players in each age group ended up being picked for further training by the school’s mentors. The trials’ winners will be able to attend the #SIBURCAMP summer training camp together with their own coaches. The camp will be held at the modern "Sea of Sports" sports grounds in Nizhegorodskaya Oblast. The camp’s best performers will be invited to attend further trials sessions with BC Zenit’s junior teams.
During the trials days, two-day theoretical sessions and workshops were held for coaches and teachers by the country's leading coaches. The module’s curriculum included methodologies for teaching basketball to children with special educational needs. The so-called “unified matches” where athletes with and without disabilities play on the same team, were held as part of this project. These tournaments are a testament to the fact that sport is one of the most important tools for building an inclusive society and providing equal opportunities to all people regardless of their physical or mental disabilities.
Among the mentors of SIBUR’s Basketball School are the likes of Nikita Morgunov, a member of Russia’s national squad that won the 2007 European championship, Anatoly Laptev, the most titled coach of the Student Basketball Association, and other famous athletes. The project is being supervised by Sergey Bykov, a professional basketball player, an Honored Master of Sport, SIBUR’s Ambassador and leader of SIBUR’s basketball promotion program in the regions of the company’s presence.
SIBUR's Basketball School amalgamates all of the company's initiatives aimed at developing basketball, promoting sports and a healthy lifestyle in the regions where the company has operations, Sergey Bykov commented. It is the key to nurturing a healthy, active and socially involved generation. Team sports such as basketball help to develop one’s athletic skills along with various personality traits including appreciation of team values, breadth of thinking, ability to make split-second decisions and other abilities that will be useful in anyone’s future life. I am confident that our project will serve as a powerful impetus for the young players to keep getting better and make progress.
Over a period of two months, the project’s selection trials will be taking place in eight cities: Dzerzhinsk, Voronezh, Tomsk, Nizhnevartovsk, Perm, Blagoveshchensk, Tyumen and Tobolsk. Earlier, these cities had their basketball courts revamped as part of a partnership between SIBUR and the National Basketball Association.