Manufacturer of baskets in Redondela

Paula Fernandez Lopezborn in Lugo in 1972, but raised in Vigo, is a basketball player. It started as playerhe started as coach with girls a year younger than her and almost three decades, presides basketball club circle it, which he founded just as he was about to take a vacation. In the end, that concept has not been in his life since he went to the basket in college.

He says that in terms of sports, he tried “a little bit of everything”. “So am I ballet. Mom wasn’t aware that it wasn’t my hobby,” she says with a laugh. Yes, basketball was, in which she started as Benjamin at the Mariano school, where his father led sports at the time. “Then, in my youth, I went to Celticwho was then Boscoand I continued to be connected until I went to study abroad,” she recalls.

From the beginning, he remembers that he lived next to the school and that he was in and out all day with training sessions, on weekend matches… «There were school and federal sports, we played both modalities and I enjoyed it. a lots of . We had good generations and when if you win, you like it more», he admits that he was hooked in childhood. Although his vision is different: “You have to do sports for the sake of doing it, not for the results.” And this is what he instills in the children in Redondela.

But teaching basketball takes much longer. Actually, she was a child too. “I was 14 years old, and the players were thirteen. Take it out degrees and I started training,” he details. He had to leave that phase when he went to study in Ourense, but he did it again: “I returned to Marian train and coordinate: licenses, negotiations with the Federation and such things. I was there for several years, until in 2008“, he comments. At that moment, already thrown into the labor market, she decided to take a break.

The attempt to slip away for a moment, however, stopped there. received a call from Galician Basketball Association asking him to exist school in the chapel that I needed someone. And even though he resisted, he couldn’t say no. “I started with seven children of different ages and there was no club, I founded it. We didn’t even have baskets. There was a man, who even today I don’t know who he was, who hid them when they were sent to us because he was afraid that we would take the children away from handball,” explains Fernández.

The adventure began at Alexandre Bóveda’s school, in Chapela, where he went one day a week. “At the end of the course, I held a conference and more and more children started coming. Then I thought we have to to form a club to introduce ourselves to the Federation”, he says. And although they were first named after the school and the parish where it is located, later they took the name Redondela, which they keep now, and they also changed the location in order to have more space for the pavilions.

He played until he was 22 years old, and during his college days he had a group with which, in addition to basketball, he also played sports such as football and volleyball. “Later, we founded a group here with former students of the school. We played for a while; then we just trained and eventually injuries started appearing and I stopped playing,” he says and explains that the friendship continues even if they no longer share the field.

He assures that he has enjoyed it practically to the same extent as a coach than as a player. “I love being with them. children, but also play and practice as a manager. It’s nice, although it takes a lot of time,” he admits. For this reason, she is currently no longer training, but continues at the foot of the canyon in the guise of a president, even though she is absent from work due to a health problem. “It’s complicated to make permits, submit papers for subsidies and all that stuff. In the last two years, Kike, who is the coordinator, gave me a lot of help and if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have been able to go out this season anyway – he reveals.

Fernández claims that sometimes he feels admit and others, no, but what is very clear is that this is not what you are looking for or what you need. “I’m not doing it for the sake of it. I like it work in the shadows. At the tournament, you will never see me take the microphone and speak, no matter how much they insist on me – he reveals. But she is always ready for other things: “I am more than to tie shoelaces To a child. It’s a pleasure when someone comes to you and tells me that I trained him and now I have his son,” he says.

work in industrial laboratory Oh yeahchemical company with morning classes, which allowed him to have more free time for basketball in the afternoon. He claims that he does it as a hobby and that lose money, something that some other parent does not always have in mind. “The negative part is the bureaucracy, arguments about the track or a problem with a parent,” he says. Nothing compared to the good that this sport has brought him over the years: «It gives you friends and values. I always insist that all children are the same, better or worse players, but they are all important and necessary to be able to play.”