Women 3-on-3 players need funding to grow sport
Potential Olympians receive no funding and no prize money
The body that governs world basketball has been handing out watches, but no prize money at some women’s 3-on-3 tournaments.
FIBA couldn’t be much further behind the times on this front.
While the men’s 3-on-3 world tour hierarchy has grown in reach and financial heft since 2012, this is the inaugural year for a women’s series. The two men’s tours encompass 40 events, at which teams split a total of more than US$2 million. The women get watches. Tissot, but the inequity is sexist, embarrassing and archaic.
It wasn’t the only frustration for Team Canada. Its participation was approved at the last minute and it had just two weeks to prepare for its first tournament in Italy. It couldn’t approach potential corporate sponsors with a business plan, so it started this journey on a shoestring, self-funded budget, which was ultimately supported largely by the legwork of Basketball Alberta’s executive director Paul Sir, who raised the US$20,500 the women needed to pay their way into seven of the 15 events.
Basketball Canada wished the women well and provided some uniforms, but offered no financial support despite the fact that Michelle and Katherine Plouffe, Catherine Traer, Paige Crozon, Brittany Johnson and Mariah Nunes were going to win valuable ranking points that could help Canada qualify a women’s team for Tokyo 2020, where 3-on-3 makes its Olympic debut.
“It’s been hard, but it’s been so rewarding at the same time,” Katherine Plouffe said. “We see the larger vision of it and it’s just motivating us to keep at it. Basketball Canada, I think they publicly stated that they don’t have a plan for 3-on-3 going into the 2020 Olympics. That kind of just says it right there.
“They haven’t chosen to use their resources to build 3-on-3. That’s what it is. It’s unfortunate that going into an Olympics, where we are still top seven in the world in women’s basketball, there is a huge opportunity to build 3-on-3 and get a medal in another discipline in basketball.”
The women were on the hook for their globe-hopping airfares and made the most of those trips. They won in Prague, Bucharest, Montreal and Edmonton, where the series wrapped last weekend, and finished top four in three more. They were the series’ No. 2 team behind France and their quest for exposure gained some traction and fans along the way.
“Our goal is to qualify for the Olympics, but also to build 3-on-3 in Canada, especially for girls because it’s not as big as it is for men,” said Michelle Plouffe. “There is not the notoriety. … I think it helped that we won a lot this summer. That’s what we needed to do if we wanted it to grow and we wanted to get people on board.”
It would have been helpful and appropriate for Basketball Canada to be on board in a meaningful capacity. However, president Glen Grunwald said none of the funds they received from the Canadian Olympic Committee, Own The Podium and Sport Canada were budgeted for 3-on-3 and none could be diverted.
“We have commitments to spend the money they give us in certain ways and 3-on-3 wasn’t included in that,” he said. “We tried to help them raise some money. We have our annual meetings next month and will certainly try and work with our funding partners to find some money for them.”
Hopefully, FIBA also makes it a priority, in 2020 for goodness sakes, to wipe out the massive gender inequity in a discipline headed to the Olympic stage. “It sucks that we’re in 2019 and just overall women and men don’t get the same (support),” said Traer, whose husband Thomas Scrubb recently played with Canada’s men’s team at the World Cup in China.
The women launched a GoFundMe campaign and 25 donors have committed $2,960 toward the $20,000 goal. Every little bit helps, but FIBA and Basketball Canada simply have to step up for the good of the game.
If there is no financial incentive for women to play 3-on-3, there is every chance the discipline won’t attract high-quality competitors, especially in non-Olympic years.
Team Canada’s women have gone above and beyond to foster change.
Crozon, whose 11-month-old daughter Poppy was a spectator in Edmonton, said: “I hope that we’re going to break down barriers so eventually, when she wants to play, there is going to be prize money for her, that she’s going to be treated the same (as male players).”