Hostile environment for new clubs
The Athena-UMFK basketball team from Kjalarnes will play in the 1st division of women’s basketball in the upcoming season. The club will have a championship team for the first time, but until now it has focused on junior team work under the guidance of Brynjar Karl Sigurðsson.
He attracted a lot of attention in the documentary Hækkum råna, which was released earlier this year, but the movie dealt with 8-13-year-old girls whom he trained at ÍR in 2015.
“We want to expand this group that has been training in Kjalarnes, and we believe that it is our best training group to include older girls. They are getting to the age where they are competing with girls who have made the Premier League team. This is more suitable for us to get a better training group, since there have been few of them training with us,” said Brynjar in an interview with mbl.is.
Former national team player and Icelandic champion Bergþóra Holton Tómasdóttir, who has coached at Athena, will join the team, and the club plans to add other experienced players.
“It is unclear how the group will be, but Bergthóra Holton is at least going to stop coaching and go to the gym,” said Brynjar. He does not rule out that foreigners can join. “We are looking into it, but it is not a priority for us. We will do it just to get a group as it is more difficult on the girl side. There are some in the group who are 14 years old, but in the championship group there will be those players who are 15 years old and older. They start in the 1st division, where teams are, for example, sending in B teams.”
Brynjar is still training the girls who played the main role in Hækkum råna, but many of them are now of championship age.
“Now they have reached an age where they could play with a championship team. Half of them are from the famous group from ÍR and there were only seven girls who started playing in Kjalarnes two years ago. We were thinking that if it was difficult to get younger girls into this, we would throw ourselves into a championship group. My daughter said she would stop this if there was another year where we were admitting beginners. I have a few that are damn good,” said Brynjar. Little does he know how strong the team is compared to other teams in the 1st division.
“I know nothing about that,” Brynjar admitted and continued. “I’m focusing on building a good training squad because that’s been lacking for the last two years. It has been small for us, so the main concern is to create a good training group. It is sad to do it if we can girls who are of high school age. I am primarily in this to grow and develop players. I don’t take Icelandic championships seriously.”
He says it is difficult for a new club to enter the league competition in Iceland, and when the club’s home ground is not a legal competition ground. The team will play home games in Álftanes and supporters who want to continue to go on a journey of excellence.
“It’s a scary situation when it comes to making pitches legal. There are no legal competition facilities here as there are no spectator facilities. This was the only thing that could be found for us, so those who go to home games from Kjalarnes always go to away games. It was possible to go further than this. This is still a celebration compared to the morale that has met us in movement. Obstacles have been thrown down for this club and it’s like an obstacle course. It is not expected that new clubs will spring up. This is a hostile environment for that,” said Brynjar and continued.
“This is Athens UMFK and it’s an 80-year-old club, but it’s an elbow child in this battery. We need to pay the street club that comes from a neighborhood that clearly lacks some kind of atmosphere,” he said.
Unlike most other associations in this country, Athena is run entirely by volunteers. Brynjar and other coaches pay their share of the work.
“It will be very interesting to see what can be done from this. We are not exactly Kría or Kórdrengi or anything like that. This is run on a junior class pole and then all of a sudden there is a master class. This is the voluntary work of death and the opposite of other associations. All the coaches are paying themselves and buying the uniforms and driving up to Kjalarnes,” he said.
But why does Brynjar put so much effort into unpaid work? “I love these kids. It’s crazy and I have my kids in it too. This is something I know and this is the perfect place to raise children,” said Brynjar Karl.