This past Friday, I had the great pleasure of attending a women’s basketball tournament here in Suli with the AUIS women’s basketball team, of which I am an assistant coach. The tournament was pretty major, and was supposed to be even more major but the teams from the south, for example from Baghdad, did not make it. (‘The south’, by the way, is used up here to refer to anything that is not Kurdistan.) Nonetheless it was an amazing event; there were 5 teams there from the Kurdish region, one from Dohuk, Erbil and Mosul and 2 from Suli. I am no basketball expert, but these women were playing ball. On the right are the Erbil and Suli club teams in action:
- Suli basketball fan hooligans
They all sported the professional, traditional basketball uniforms: jams, jerseys and high tops. While waiting for their game, I saw many in the stands wearing WNBA and assorted basketball camp T-shirts. And though the crows were slim, there were many cheers and even the classic male hooligan section complete with a drum and annoying cries during the opposing teams’s free shots. (See picture above left.)
Glad to see your post about Iraqi women’s basketball. I have been following articles and television features on the Gizing Basketball School for girls (also in Suli). They are making great strides in developing basketball for girls. I read that the coaches at Gizing–Deb and Rizgar–have said very positive things about what you guys at AUIS are doing in basketball. Keep up the good work.