Basketball: Everyone should want to be Tapiola’s Honka

The Espoo club has started perfectly in the men’s Korisliiga: five matches and as many victories. The team has managed to knock down, among others, last season’s finalists Kataja Basket and Salon Vilppa, which has dazzled on the Eurocourts until the fall.

You see sudden success in sports every now and then, and it can continue for a long time. There are as many reasons as there are examples.

Honka is wonderful in how deep the roots of its development go. It gets it right, so to speak.

However, if you look at the team sports textbook, Honga’s rise to the top shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Top expertise has been found on the parquet floor, on its edge and in the corner room.

Honkahalli serves as a mecca of success.

Tapiola Honga’s own basketball arena was built in the Tapiola sports park in 2011.

Investors from Honka, high seasonal fees, a 650,000-euro grant from the Ministry of Education and Culture, and the loan period of the city of Espoo made it possible to no longer have to run the roulette of 30 different schools.

The club’s juniors are allowed to go to the hall of three full basketball courts to throw whenever there are no practices on the floor. The janitor won’t ask what the young people are doing to throw the ball or lift weights.

Past, present and future professional players can be seen daily in the coffee shop and in the corridors. Sports decision-makers’ favorite concept, the athlete’s path, is crystal clear in Honga, because the activities of adults and Juniors have stayed well together.

It is true that not many junior clubs have seen a pioneer of a global technology company or the chairman of the general meeting where Nokia was sold to Microsoft.

Men’s The basketball kings of the basketball league are usually foreigners. The previous Finnish-born number one in the regular season is Tapio Sten from the season 1979–80.

This season’s statistics show that 13 of the top 15 scorers are foreigners. Grown by Tapiola Honga Alvar Peltoniemi and Riku Korhonen can be found in positions four and six.

Peltoniemi, 25, scores 22.2 points per game for Honga. Korhonen, 22, moved to Lahti Basketball for this season and is scoring 20.3 points per game.

It is likely that the duo in question will be of interest in many professional leagues tougher than Korisliiga.

Honks born in this millennium can be found in six of the total of 12 teams in the Korisliiga. For example Sebastian Lindberg celebrated in a significant role the SM gold in Vilppaa at the end of the previous season.

Both the aforementioned trio and the other young Honks playing in the Korisliiga have received their basketball lessons From Aapo Heinowho was promoted from the junior coach to the head coach of the men’s national team in the 2018–19 season.

Honka had fallen to the third level after the bankruptcy of Espoo United, and it was convenient for the then responsible coach of the A-boys to run the whole palette.

Heinonen Honka has moved up to the league by playing. Cabinet decisions have not been needed.

Divari years trained many talents into usable league players. Only Peltoniemi, Lauri Kallio and arrived in time from HBA Iiro Tuomi.

The youth national team players from ten years ago Tomas Pihlajamäki and Jaakko Juusela have returned home, and Alvan Laavainen mixed Veeti Ulander bring new blood to the familiar booth.

Heinonen said in the winter that Honga develops because there they dare to fail and because everyone gets to play with their strengths and thus with high self-confidence.

When a few Korisliiga players were asked about it, they mentioned the same things as Honga’s virtues.

As a relief, you could ask if Finland’s most international sports coach got it Tuomas Iisalokin the golden touch from Honga.

Iisalo played and coached Honga’s men in the early 2010s. He piloted the club’s B-boys in 2016, when he was wanted as the head coach of the German premier league Crailsheim Merlins.

The rest is such a wonderful history that a golden spring would surely make Heinonen a hot name on the European coaching market.

There is every possibility of that.

Kipinä Basket–Tapiola Honka on Wednesday at 18:30.