Athletes trained in Friends feed national selections and senior teams in Portugal and Spain

The CAB athletes are marking a very strong presence in the young national teams. After Leonor Nunes confirmed his place in the lot of selected to represent Portugal in the Championship European under-19 female, it was the turn of the ‘capist’ Maryam Chermiti to claim as one of the main references of the national selection of sub-16 female, which will compete for the final phase of the European selection competition. In the male sector, the CAB is also proving to be a recruitment club for the 'quinas' teams. After seeing calls for the work of the national selection of sub-16 male athletes Henrique Cunha and Tiago Oliveira, both products of the training schools of Friends, the club of Nazareth received confirmation that one of the selectables, namely Tiago Oliveira, will integrate the lot of final choices for the European cadet championship. In fact, the athlete is already in training with the other colleagues who will represent the country in the European level. CAB ‘spread’ by country and Spain The work of the CAB in training young basketball players is widely recognized at national level. Proof of this is the fact that the club received from the Portuguese Basketball Federation the Statute of Club trainer, a distinction that recognizes the excellence of the work developed by the Friends in the preparation of athletes from the most diverse age groups. Only seven clubs in Portugal hold that status, and the CAB is one of them. But in addition to ‘fooding’ national selections with great regularity, basketball players trained at the CAB have been present in several top league teams in Portugal and Spain. These are examples Mário Gil (acting at Benfica), Nuno Sá (at Dragon Force), João Galina (also at Dragon Force), Marcy Gonçaves (at Quinta dos Lombos), Catarina Caldeira (at Sporting), Vitória Pacheco (at Boa Viagem, dos Açores) and Maria João Correia (at Deportivo EREF, Spain). Senior CAB Plants with the Training Brand Internally, CAB Formation has also assumed a very important role in the preparation of players for the teams that compete with great competitiveness for the maximum leagues of Portuguese basketball. Traditionally, in the female sector, the CAB has won several national titles with teams mostly formed by the ‘silver of the house’. The next season will be no exception, and among the players formed at the club who will be present at the squad are Carolina Escortius, Carla Freitas, Marta Bravo, Cíntia France and Sara Barreira. Besides these, already regular presences in the Women's League squad, others will join, coming from the younger layers, especially from the sub-24 team, which militates in the 1st Women's Division. In the male sector, Madeiran athletes are also gaining their space. For 2015-2016, there will be no less than eight players who integrate the squad that will play in the Men's League, namely Nuno Bazenga, Miguel Martins, Gonçalo Miranda, Bruno Cavalcante, João Pedro Fernandes, Tiago Oliveira, José Correia and Carlos Bettencourt. Thus, in a fourteen-player squad, the ‘product of the earth’ is almost sixty percent of the team, an unprecedented fact in the professional league teams. President highlights ‘generations’ For Francisco Gomes, president of the CAB, the statement of athletes trained in the club is not a surprise. “Formation is the club’s fundamental mission, that is, its DNA. We did not discover the importance of Formation when it became fundamental to face economic difficulties, but we always embrace it as a priority. What we have seen in terms of participations of athletes trained in the club at the level of selections and other teams of various leagues is the result of the commitment of generations of managers and coaches who have and always had the Training as a reason to be CAB.” The good results achieved are not reason for rest for the leader of Friends, who refuses to ‘sleep’ in the shadow of conquests. “There is no day when we do not stand up looking for areas and aspects where we can improve our action as a club. We are aware of the enormous path we still have to go, and what motivates us at all levels is exactly what we still need to achieve, and not what we have already achieved.”