By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
This season may not start for one of the most historic Russian basketball clubs and one of the four professional teams in team sports based in the Yaroslavl region of the country. We are talking about Burevestnik, the bronze medalist of the first division of the Super League of the 2019-2020 season – basketball and a staple in Russia’s premier championship.
According to reports in federal media, the RBF (Russian Basketball Federation) is about to completely annul the professional status of the club any day now. The ramifications of this are obvious and include the loss of the results and the work of a large number of Yaroslavl basketball specialists who have invested a huge amount of effort and money towards the revival of the club during the period from 2012 to 2021. In addition, the Voznesensky Hall exhibition center, that was reequipped specifically for the development of basketball, will be of no use with no major basketball event in the Yaroslavl region.
Burevestnik is a team that has attracted a lot of fans due to their devotion to basketball and know-how of winning even during a period when the club had a semi-professional status. The team became a four-time champion of the Central Federal District, a bronze medalist in the final of the winners of the championships of the Federal Districts. Then, since 2015, when Burevestnik received the status of a professional club, they managed to become the winners of the second division tournament of the Super League of the Russian championship and formalize the transition to the first division (Super League). In their debut season, they made it to the playoffs and finished at fifth place overall. The following year, Burevestnik went on to win a medal in the Russian Super League for the first time in the history of the club.
Unfortunately, due to the refusal of sponsorship, the club was forced to part ways with the team leaders last season. Despite this, as well as many months of wage problems, Burevestnik managed to once again play in the playoffs. The team captain in this difficult season was Alexander Ermolovich, a native of Yaroslavl. The team also made a discovery of prominent Russian basketball talent, that of was the young guard Andrei Toptunov. At the age of 17, Toptunov received an invitation from the national team and was preparing for the qualifying tournament of the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Such achievements would have been impossible without the work of the coaching tandem in the person of the head coach Mikhail Terekhov and his assistant, the representative of the Yaroslavl coaching school Alexei Nuzhdin. An example of their high coaching level was that in the current offseason, they headed the Syrian national team and successfully led it to Asian Games. Today the Yaroslavl coaching tandem is one of the most effective in the Russian Super League.
Basketball in Yaroslavl does not lead when it comes to popularity among sports audiences, but it remains one of the most beloved activities among young people – students of universities and colleges, college students, senior schoolchildren, young specialists, and veterans of this gameplay. Basketball tournaments of “3X3” in open-air courts gather up to 600-700 participants from all municipal districts of the region – and a solid amount of spectators. The club shutting down will have the most negative impact when it comes to the confidence of this part of the population that they can have a basketball organization representing them in important competitions.
Fans in Yaroslavl region are still hoping that this will be prevented and that their club will stay as it is. Burevestnik is of great importance for the region since it’s the strongest sports team and its existence at a pro-level means a lot for the area.
The professional club can be wiped off the face of the Earth for the first time in the history of Yaroslavl.