Oriented on making people closer

As a part of preparation for the upcoming international competitions, in particular - the FIBA 3x3 Basketball Asia Cup and World Cup, Turkmen athletes went for training session to Baku.

Before departure, ORIENT had an interview with Ayna Gokova, the captain of the Women’s Basketball Team of Turkmenistan, who shared her expectations from the session and talked about the team’s mood before important tournaments.

“It would be excellent preparation session for major competitions. We intend to train very hard the powers of endurance and physical skills as we would compete with one of the strongest women’s teams from China and Latvia at the World Cup,” the athlete, who was recognized as the best scorer of the FIBA 3x3 Basketball World Cup last year, shared with us.

After Azerbaijan, basketball players will go for training session to Lithuania, and then, to France, where an international tournament with all teams participating at the World Cup 2019 will also be held.

The FIBA 3x3 Basketball Asia Cup to be held in Changsha, China, (May 24-26) and the World Cup to be held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, (June 18-23) will be the third for the Turkmen 3x3 Basketball Women’s team. During this period, they improved their positions in the FIBA ​​world rankings, demonstrating a well-coordinated game. Some of the players of the team, for example, Gokova, are gaining international experience, playing for foreign basketball teams.

For example, quite recently, with Azad University team, Ayna won the Iranian Basketball Super League and the gold medal. It is not her first performance in the Iranian basketball league, where she proved herself to be a valuable player.

Earlier, Gokova played for the teams of Kazakhstan and Turkey; she was invited to the Maldives, Serbia, and Poland. The Iranian team will be one of the rivals of the Turkmen team at the Asia Cup 2019 in China.

“We will win them. We just have to do it, because I know what our team is able to do it,” Gokova said.

Ayna remembered that it was the team spirit that led the Turkmen team to win the bronze medal at the V Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games 2017 in Ashgabat. At the crucial moment, after a three-point shot of Gokova, basketball players of Syria could not even equalize the score.

“Our coach Milan Kotaratz used to say: you have to win even if you have a slight – one point – edge. We understood that if it does not happen, then the tournament, the home competition, would be finished for us. Again, we will take the fourth place. We realized that we have to meet expectations of those who believed in us. We had to do it – and so it happened. We won the bronze medal,” the captain recalled.

After all, at the Asia Beach Games 2016 in Vietnam, IV Islamic Solidarity Games 2017 in Baku, the Turkmen team was one-step behind the bronze, taking only the fourth place.

One of Ayna’s goals is to get into European basketball clubs so that the experience gained there can be used to further improve Turkmen basketball.

“Our current coach, Alexander Pashkov, once told me: “Use the potential that you have, play, and train more,” Gokova says, confirming that she is not going to rest on her laurels and she would go ahead only. “Our team now has every chance to make a breakthrough to a new level!”