If Sibilio could see it...

Dominican basketball surprised the powerful Argentine team this Sunday, world runner-up who will not be able to defend their position.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
27 February 2023 Monday 11:25
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If Sibilio could see it...

Dominican basketball surprised the powerful Argentine team this Sunday, world runner-up who will not be able to defend their position.

The Dominicans brought down Argentina from Campazzo, Laprovittola, Deck, Bolmaro and Delfino in Mar del Plata (75-79) and earned a place in the Basketball World Cups in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia next summer (August 25 to 10 September), and the chronicler saw how his thesis was reinforced: Dominican sports, historically always one step behind its Cuban, Jamaican, Puerto Rican or Bahamian neighbors, today looks different in the international sphere.

(...)

Twenty-five years ago, the soccer players of the Dominican national team gathered in the belly of the Olympic Stadium in Santo Domingo, the capital.

They washed their shirts in the sink taps, slept on cots, endured the bites of mosquitoes and, at night, listened to the screeching and footsteps of rats, which scampered at their feet.

At that time, the head of Dominican soccer was Osiris Guzmán, today a leader disqualified for ten years for corruption and bribery.

(It has been proven in court that the man gave good pinches to the budget that FIFA invested in Dominican soccer).

Today, the Dominican soccer team looks different. When it holds rallies, its members sleep in the Dominican Casa de Campo or in good international hotels, and charge per diems and face powerful rivals.

–A year ago, we snatched a goalless draw against Serbia, a milestone for our football– says Carlitos Heredia, a Dominican born in Barcelona who has 13 international caps with the Dominican Republic and has gone through Spanish, English and Polish football before arriving in Santo Domingo. Today he plays for Cibao FC and has founded a soccer academy in the capital, the CH Academy.

-And where is the change? – she asks him.

–Precisely in that, in which the new leaders have assumed their obligations and invest international subsidies in football.

Blessed by the correct praxis, Dominican soccer (152nd in the FIFA ranking) has earned a place in the Paris 2024 Games and is already around access to the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the equivalent of our Eurocup, the never seen there.

(...)

The birth of his football is similar to other disciplines. The Caribbean is witnessing the prodigious expansion of Dominican sports, an unprecedented event in the region since, historically, Dominicans have lagged behind Cubans, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Bahamians, or even Trinidadians.

The jump is important.

The Dominican Republic is no longer just a hotbed for volleyball players, boxers or baseball players (baseball players like the legendary Sammy Sosa, Albert Pujols or Álex Rodríguez).

The key is found in the project "Creating Olympic Dreams" (CRESO).

Launched in 2009 and endowed with an annual budget of 1.5 million euros, CRESO (led by businessman Manuel Luna) is a kind of ADO plan subsidized mostly by private companies, and its foundation has blessed gymnasts (Audrys Nin, world medalist), athletes and basketball players.

Marileidy Paulino, Fiordaliza Cofil (both in the 400) and Alexander Ogando (200) have taken over from Félix Sánchez and Luguelín Santos: like those, they accumulate podiums in international competitions and lead an emerging squad.

With its exhibition in Mar del Plata, Dominican basketball has added to those feats: it has entered a new dimension, who would have said it in the 1970s and 1980s, when Chicho Sibilio (DEP) and Evaristo Pérez immigrated to Spain to lift your head.