Basketball Top Division 2 & BNXT League Falco Gent & Okapi Aalst
Players could gain experience at both Falco Gent and Okapi Aalst. — © Nic Declercq / Gregory Van Gansen
A first in East Flemish basketball. Falco Gent enters into a close collaboration with renowned first division club Okapi Aalst. Falco took a lot of organizational steps forward last season. After the construction of a new canteen, efforts were made to give the Ghent club more image and appeal to supporters. Ties with the business community were also strengthened. This week, the club went one step further.
Johan Gaudissabois
“We are not merging with Okapi Aalst, but there will be very close cooperation,” Falco coach Jeffrey Brown clarifies. “Our club and our players simply have to live with the reality that our options do not extend beyond the Top Division 2 and hopefully the Top Division 1 in the short term. Offering the players experience at the level of the BNXT League was not an option for the time being . That is now possible. There will be the possibility to train with both teams. A double license would allow our players to train with Okapi during the day and with Falco in the evening. In this way, an ideal platform is created to allow our better players to grow optimally. In the same sense, involved players can also play in both competitions. That would only be possible if they are younger than 23 years old. If you say that this formula, for example, could have kept Robbe Van den Bossche with Falco for longer, then that is not correct because Robbe will be 25 this year.”
Names will follow shortly
“Is this model the East Flemish version of the collaboration between Kortrijk Spurs and ION Waregem? Not really,” Brown thinks. “In the West Flemish scenario, Kortrijk largely determines who can move on to the A-team. The Spurs want to include a certain number of players in their squad. It won’t work out that way with us. We don’t want to go too far and, as I said, it’s not a merger at all. In any case, some Falco players will be involved in this model from next season. Names will be communicated by Okapi Aalst shortly. Whether players will also come to Falco from Aalst remains to be seen. In any case, there is a lot of music in this unique exchange”, concludes the coach.
