Azu Muguruza, the miracle woman of Spanish basketball

Normality seen with perspective becomes extraordinary. Azu Muguruza (San Sebastián, 53 years old) fell in love with basketball playing with her classmates in the courtyard of the Mary Ward school in Donosti and, as she grew up among baskets, she came into contact with the coaching profession teaching girls from the school that followed in his footsteps. “It is key to get excited at that stage. I loved basketball and also teaching, so I prepared myself to combine those two passions and dedicate myself to the sport, ”she says. This is how the story of a miracle begins: that of a coach who has been practicing the trade for 29 years in the same team, also combining it with the job of a Physical Education teacher. Quite a feat in the midst of the serious anomaly that there is only two women in the 16 benches of the Spanish Women’s League. “I ask the students for respect; to the players, work and humility… And to the coaches, I would advise resilience, the time will come when things change, ”she launches.

Muguruza graduated in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences (INEF) from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU). She worked as a quarry trainer and physical trainer at Juven Saki Baloia and Gros Loyola, currently Bera-Bera. And, in 1993, when she was barely 25 years old, she received the proposal that marked her life. The UPV needed a coach for the women’s team of the National University League and they offered him her job. The project grew, ascending categories and becoming professional until it became the IDK Euskotren, which this afternoon is measured at Avenue Perfumeries (nine times champion) in the opening match of the queen’s cup (at 18.30, in Tdp). Almost three decades later, Muguruza is still there, leading the San Sebastian team. His story is the story of his club.

“I started naturally, never imagining that we were going to achieve such goals. But we went along the way, completing stages, and here I am still… enduring the pull. Things have gone well and they continue to put up with me”, explains the San Sebastian coach without pretensions. “On a day-to-day basis you don’t think about that trip, but it’s a real blast. We started from scratch and look where we are. And we have the ambition to continue achieving more things, such as completing participation in European competitions”, adds Muguruza in his review of a curriculum that is as specific as it is intense. The UPV played in the university category until 2001, when the team reached an agreement with Atlético San Sebastián to participate in the First National under the name of UPV Atlético. And six seasons later, in León, he achieved promotion to the Women’s League 2, the prelude to the elite and professionalism.

“In that 2007 came the great leap and the great change,” recalls Muguruza. “We saw that the project required a much greater dedication, with much more work off the track, to prepare ourselves and study the rivals. I had done everything, from taking care of physical preparation, giving massages, bandaging ankles… to all the tasks that can be in a team. But the club realized that it was no longer enough for me to be swarming everywhere, “adds Azu, who by then was already the mother of two children, Laia (23 years old, graduated in Business Administration and Management) and Ander (20, Real youth squad, who debuted in the First Division in 2018) and withdrew the Superior Title of coach. The new structure was renamed Club Deportivo Ibaeta and her sister Carmen, who runs her own company and knew the world of management from afar, became the president. Together they came third in the Spanish championship with the school team, and together they have made the IDK a reference model, due to stability and results, in the Endesa Women’s League, a category to which they were promoted in 2013, in the midst of a crisis of the competition.

“A woman who works, who manages a club, who has children and a family, has a terrifying day to day. But we don’t feel championed by anything, we live it naturally,” the president told the FEB in 2020. “The stability of the project and the club’s policy I don’t know if it has to do with the natural way of understanding the ambition we have women, always placing the ego in second place… or with the Gipuzkoan character, that we are picky shovels, little by little, hard work, little talk and a lot of doing”, said Carmen Muguruza. IDK from San Sebastián and Araski from Vitoria, chaired by Iratxe Rodríguez, are the only two teams with female coaches on their benches: Azu Muguruza and Madelén Urieta, respectively.

“The secret is to persist,” continues Azu, a Physical Education teacher in the mornings (for students between 11 and 17 years old) and an elite coach in the afternoons. “I have grown up with many coaches in training categories and, however, when you get to the top you think, what happens, where are the women? The clubs should respond. Why don’t they trust us? There are many qualified to be in this league”, emphasizes Muguruza. “There are many women who, seeing that that opportunity never comes, decide to dedicate themselves to the professional life that each one has… you can’t keep waiting forever. That’s where the gap opens, due to the lack of opportunities.” Azu, awarded as the best coach in Spain, in 2015 and 2017, is still in the fight after having transformed a university training team into a first-class club, “based on soul”, with the girls from home at the beginning and with a locker room with six nationalities now. “We have been growing while the league has been recovering and we have shown that we are up to the task so as not to be left behind,” explains Muguruza, who does not use a blackboard in his classes or in downtime. Her path of 29 years as a coach is indelibly traced.

You can follow EL PAÍS DEPORTES on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.