By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Himar Ojeda has been the man responsible for sports planning at ALBA for over seven years. During his time, the club has celebrated three championship titles and three cup wins for men, managed to get promoted to the first league for women and helped numerous young and professional players to make the next leaps in development.
And the successful cooperation will continue in the future: The 50-year-old sporting director has extended his contract with the Albatrosses by another five years and will thus continue to promote the overall sporting development of the club in the future, in the youth program as well as in the women’s and men’s divisions.
“I am delighted that the relationship with ALBA is deepening even further. The whole club and all the people I get to work with here have grown very dear to me over the years. ALBA is simply something special. That’s why my decision wasn’t just about opportunities to build competitive teams here or to play for titles. My decision was primarily one for the program’s values, which make me feel so connected to the club. That’s why I’m very grateful for the trust that our club president Axel Schweitzer, as well as Marco and the other colleagues from the ALBA management, have in me and my work. I am very pleased to be able to continue to be part of this program.”
Himar Ojeda was born on September 26, 1972 in Las Palmas on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. His enthusiasm for basketball brought him to his first coaching job in his hometown at the age of 20. He started his career with CB Santa Brigada and CB Salesianos and then went to 1995 as a youth coach for the Spanish first division club CB Gran Canaria. There he was appointed to the coaching staff of Gran Canaria’s ACB team in 1999. For eight years, Himar Ojeda assisted the head coaches Manuel Hussein, Pedro Martínez and Salva Maldonado as an assistant coach. For the 2007/08 season he changed to the role of sporting director of Gran Canaria and even assumed overall responsibility for the club as general manager from 2010.
After a total of 17 years at CB Gran Canaria, Himar Ojeda looked for a new challenge in the summer of 2012: he was responsible for one season as sports director at the Spanish first division club Estudiantes Madrid and then switched to the player agency You First. For the 2014/15 season, the Atlanta Hawks finally brought him to them, who made Himar Ojeda head of their international scouting. The NBA team let him out of his contract early in 2016, making his move to ALBA BERLIN possible.
Only a short time after taking office as sports director in Berlin in February 2016, the ALBA men won the BBL Cup. For the 2017/18 season, Himar Ojeda then steered the Spanish coaching legend Aíto García Reneses to the Albatrosses and thus created the basis for the following four successful seasons, in which ALBA reached nine of eleven possible finals, in the 2019/20 season the double from championship and cup and won the championship again in the following season 2020/21. At the same time, the men’s team established itself as a EuroLeague participant and also celebrated the double under Aíto’s successor Israel González in the 2021/22 season. In addition, in the 2021/22 season, ALBA’s women’s team completed its march from the Landesliga to the Bundesliga and was promoted to the DBBL for the first time, where it even ended up among the top four teams in the league in the 2022/23 season.