essential
Further and faster, 3X3 basketball seduces to Castelnaudary. The local club launched the first Audoise women’s team, a pioneer of an booming Olympic discipline. A sporting adventure that is just beginning.
Play Basketball three against three. Appeared in the late 1980s in the United States, this reduced format of basketball was often played at the foot of cities before its phenomenal success. It is more accessible than traditional basketball because it is practiced with fewer players. In the Castelnaudary club, in Aude, four enthusiasts practice it.
Global effervescence around this practice
Carried by popular craze, the 3 against 3 was tested for the first time in 2010 by the International Federation at the Olympic Youth Games in Singapore. On June 9, 2017, the 3X3 was added to the Olympic program for the Tokyo 2020 Games. After the first Singapore event, it only took this game to become Olympic discipline.
With fewer players and a single basket, the game quickly seduces. It was in 2011, during the first FIBA U18 world championships (International Basketball Federation), that the “3×3” gains in legitimacy and that it begins to be supervised. In 2012, the 3×3 senior world championships were launched and the 3×3 World Tour. Then come the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, during which 3×3 basketball lived its second Olympiad.
Castelnaudary Pionnere in Aude
In France, the 3X3 FFBB club competition was launched in 2018. It is open to all clubs affiliated to the French basketball federation. A first departmental phase – from September 1 to the end of April – then possibly departmental finals, to finally arrive at the region’s master’s degree. Obligation for clubs: play four stops in the year. Namely, each stop is a tournament.
This practice ended up landing in Aude. Chaurian basketball is a pioneer in the matter, since he created at the start of the season the first 3×3 female team, under the leadership of Mélanie Havet, player and treasurer of the club, and her husband Guillaume, who plays and trains the seniors boys, the U18 girls, the youngest (U13), and now the 3X3 female. Being the only team in Aude, the Chauriennes are engaged in departmental bi with the Pyrénées-Orientales where the 3×3 is better established. And even if this practice, in the years to come, leads to the creation of many Aude teams, the Chauriennes will forever be the first.
Tournaments to discover next year
Today, the Chauriennes are four to form the team of three engaged in Catalan tournaments: Geneviève Lamart, Melissa Caetano, Marina Fernandez and Mélanie Havet. They will remain forever the pioneers of the 3×3 basketball. If by chance, other women are interested, they can reach Mélanie on 06 15 86 85 42. For this first year, Lauragaises only compete for stops organized in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales. But as of next season, the Castelnaudary public will be able to discover this sport of rare intensity and which requires good technical background.
