No success is coincidental, you can reach to success with conscious efforts. In 1987, the Turkish Basketball League Championship was based on great efforts and continuous hard work for many years.
Youth Academy ‘s organizational structure has achieved such a success that has never been done even in today’s Turkey and it has been studied in universities as case studies and thesis. It was such a great organization that has been awarded by two championship rings.
As in every other organization, Karsiyaka’s basketball organization’s success which has been well known in Turkey, has come with a group of people who have lived with basketball all the time and were able criticize themselves. Ateş Özerk, Serdar Zenger, Ayhan Öngen ve Baha Eğinlioğlu who were the major role players in this era, have worked for the organization almost for 20 years.
There have been more members that we didn’t name them out here and they have always been a part of the organization and distributed to our success.
This legendary group of our members with their enthusiams about Karsiyaka have made the correct and rational decisions over the time that brought us the success. These decisions were such as; getting the right coaching staff on board and the respect and trust they have showed to them; getting the local Karsiyaka players together to boost the team spirit and all decisions have made us successful first at Youth Academy level and then the league level. They gave all the authority to run the organization to Atakan Karakaplan whose techinal and basketball knowledge is still not replacable. He is one of the best coaches in Turkey and he has become the head coach of the national team. He started working with the players that were trained in our academy program and transfered players that have played for us in the past and other enthusiastic young players. He has thaught them the basic discipline and hard work. In those years, we had only one facility for training and he has coached all the teams at every level in this one and only facility. He has contributed a lot with his personality and ethic of hard work and has never let his friends down who have put him in this position.
Atakan Karakaplan has trained countless players and very good coaches for Karsiyaka basketball family. İlhan Erdem, Mustafa Albere, Mete Babaoğlu, Aclan Kavasoğlu are some of the coaches that came to our minds now... Atakan Karakaplan’s biggest advantage was to be backed up by knowledgable people and they had full faith in him.
Our Youth Academy’s success story started way before 1987. We have started to hear the footsteps of our legendary roster and every single person in the organization was locked into the goal and continued to work hard. Our Youth Academy teams have won some many championships prior to this year and we have lost track of the number of championships. All most all of the players have called for national team and experienced that environment. Having grown up together in Karsiyaka and playing together for so many years was the key factor of this legendary roster. Having given these players self-confidence and playing time on the court, of course with the support of our phenomenal fans, we got two championships in that season. Tuğrul Taşkıngenç, Birtan Saka, Murat Aşkın, Cihangir Başaran, Suat Olca, Ziya Uyanık, Nihat Mala, Ediz Baksı, Necmi Mısırlıoğlu, Kaan Dağdelen They were all from Karsiyaka and they achieved this “happy ending”
–THIS IS AN ORGANIZATIONAL LEGEND.
–THIS IS AN ACADEMY LEGEND.
–THIS IS A COOPERATION LEGEND.
– THIS IS A HARD WORKING LEGEND.
–THIS IS A STABILITY LEGEND.
– THIS IS A CREATING SOURCES LEGEND.
– THIS IS A CORRECT DECISIONS LEGEND.
– THIS IS A MANAGEMENT LEGEND.
– THIS IS A KARSIYAKA LEGEND.
We thank everybody that have lived and helped us to live this success. Karsiyaka Sports Club and basketball family will never forget and will take you as an example.
The expectation of us is; to repeat this success stories today and in the future and we will all be happy and proud of you.
ONE OF THE PERSON LIVED THAT MOMENT
EDİZ BAKSI