Since I joined this club, both myself and Reading Rockets have not stopped growing. 5 years is a long time, but they also fly by. From being a simple player who had to pay for the game transport, to being part of the marketing team, contributing to the community, developing players, and actually feeling like a Division 1 professional athlete. We made all this progress thanks to the hard work of my English family, Reading Rockets.
It’s nice to have new girls come through the door willing to play and, like always, we’re going to look after them and bring them in as a team and support them. But as you can imagine, this is hugely complex without financial support. Sports sponsorship continues to be one of the foundations of clubs and one of the fundamental communication formulas in terms of social responsibility. In recent years, women’s sporting success seems to have gone hand in hand with an increase in sponsorship, although it has been confirmed that this sponsorship represents a lower economic investment than that made for men’s sports. Sadly, this is a reality and a huge barrier when trying to grow our game in the UK. The women’s sport is a loudspeaker for empowering women. We have and we want visibility, that’s why I call on those people that want to support us.
Future and present generations, you represent a new group open to participate, listen, own, create, co-attend, learn, connect, show up and support.
I can assure you that this is only going to get bigger.
There’s a lot of hard work to do throughout the season but I’m just so excited to get back and to be able to put the shirt on again and to play for Rockets.
Great things are coming, so I encourage you to come to Loddon Valley and enjoy our basketball games!
-From Candela, a women’s player to you, the entire Reading Rockets family fans.