Friday morning, East Kilbride. The squeak of sneaker on court, the smack of ball on surface, the shouts of players, and the occasional whistle are not the normal sound of construction.
But something is building in the Playsport Arena. Basketball has had a series of false dawns in the United Kingdom but there are hopeful signs on the horizon. The women of Caledonia Gladiators are in the vanguard of this movement.
They are on manoeuvres on a practice Friday with the season opener coming over the hill. The Super League Basketball trophy win in January serves as merely a reminder of what can be achieved. Eyes are focused on what can be achieved on the court and off it.
Some of the Gladiators are, of course, mercenaries drawn from Canada, the USA, Sweden and Italy. But there is a strong Caledonian contingent and an expressed purpose to build the game and not just the team.
Professional women basketball players in Europe are used to short contracts and long journeys home in the close season.
This itinerant lifestyle is the norm for Chantelle Handy, the Gladiators’ head coach. She has walked the walk, run the length of courts, and travelled the world in search of basketball fulfilment. At 38, she can look back at a career that saw her compete in the London Olympics, win a Commonwealth Games silver medal and represent Great Britain 142 times.
Caledonia Gladiators have big ambitions for basketball at the Playsport Arena in East Kilbride
Head coach Chantelle Handy wants more success after guiding her team to the SLB trophy
Maura Fitzpatrick has joined the Gladiators after spells in Germany, Sweden and England
She prowls the sidelines at Playsport intently watching everything her charges do, occasionally taking one of the players into a quiet conference. She has been playing for more than two decades and has earned her living on court in 12 countries, including Greece, Turkey, Slovakia, France, Sweden, Poland and Spain. And now Scotland.
She has been head coach for a year, with the SLB trophy a shining achievement. Typically, she wants more.
Her career has been long and substantial but her rise was dramatic. She did not start playing basketball until she was 13 and within a year was representing England at under-15 level.
On the day she received her GCSE results, she was heading to a high school in the USA on a scholarship and she subsequently played college basketball.
‘My dad played so that was the reason to get into it. I was a footballer from five but I started to grow and he asked why I didn’t try basketball.’
She did and the rest is geography. From the USA, she has traversed Europe as a professional for 12 years.
‘I suppose we all live in our own little worlds but I have been able to experience different countries and different cultures,’ she says. The Geordie accent has been largely lost along the way but much has been gained.
‘I got to try a lot of good food,’ she says with a smile. But more substantial life experiences were presented to her.
‘I learned patience and the need to understand people,’ she says. ‘I am a certain way and others have a different way so you have to adapt to that. There is a team dynamic and you must adapt to that. I learned I was good at that.’
She also learned that life is lived in the moment. The nature of the sport is that contracts are normally just for one season. The shot clock roars and the players move on.
‘There are no guarantees,’ she says. ‘I never stayed at a club for more than a season.’
This ability to move on has to be matched by self-sufficiency. ‘It can be lonely. You eat, you sleep, you practise. You have to be selfish, very disciplined to be at that level. You sacrifice a lot of things. You sacrifice family, you sacrifice life. There is a price to be paid. And it’s worth that price. I have been very fortunate.’
Her experience does not have to be articulated. Her players know her history and are attentive in the present.
‘I have been there and done it,’ she says quietly. ‘If you want to get to a certain level, you have to play in a certain way with a certain level of intensity. Day in and day out. You are going to have bad days, that is normal, but you have to adapt to that and learn to focus. Then you will get better.’
The path to improvement has brought Maura Fitzpatrick from Connecticut to East Kilbride by way of Germany, Sweden and Manchester.
‘My older brother played overseas so I thought that if he could do it, then so could I,’ she says.
She enjoys the constant change of countries and the opportunity to make new friends but has serious ambitions to improve.
‘I want to play at a high level and I want to enjoy it. I am 28. There is no point in giving everything, giving your all if you are not enjoying it.’
She adds of her profession: ‘I feel it has given me a good work ethic. You have to be committed to show up every day. If you feel like crap, you still have to show up for other people. I have to do it for the girl next to me.’
Fitzpatrick acknowledges the game is growing in Europe. ‘It is definitely getting bigger crowds and more recognition,’ she says. ‘It has a platform and it is building.’
Sunday afternoon, East Kilbride. The doors open to the playzone and the crowd streams in. Full disclosure. One of this excited mass is Tess MacDonald. Her grandfather witters for a living. At nine, she is a Golden Warriors fan. Within two hours, she is a Caledonia Gladiators supporter.
The experience is comfortable and welcoming for those of us nervously clutching our passes but it is a wonderland for children. Loud, bright and full of action, the match is accompanied by a soundtrack of childish yelling. And that’s just from me.
However, everything is done to accommodate fans. One supporter gently observes that the coffee cups are not too big. Steve Timoney, who owns the franchise with his wife, Alison, quietly goes to his table and offers to buy him another one. He does this without fanfare.
This is but another building block, albeit improvised, in the plan to attract fans, particularly the young, and keep them coming back.
Two of the architects of this project in East Kilbride and beyond are Tony McDaid, chief executive officer of the Gladiators, and Lisa Palombo, head of professional teams and community.
Both have a long history of coaching basketball. McDaid says: ‘Basically, I am a PE teacher.’ He was. But he was also director of education for South Lanarkshire Council so his leap into the private sector was obviously driven by passion rather than straight economics.
Similarly, Palombo was a PE teacher but her ties with basketball have long been strong as she founded the lady Rocks team in 2006. Both are on a mission.
‘We want to make sure that children have role models to aspire to,’ says McDaid. ‘We can build a basketball nation. We can move the dial and bring it into the mainstream. There is no reason that can’t happen in Scotland.’
The evidence of an entertaining afternoon is persuasive. The testimony is compelling.
‘How was that for a match?’ I ask Tess after the Gladiators’ 84-57 win against Notttingham Wildcats. ‘It was great, grampa, can we come back?’
It was. And we will.
