Murals of WNBA star Maya Moore and NBA icon LeBron James alongside each other in Hypercourts in Taguig. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Female ballers are getting their own space.
To encourage and inspire other female basketball players to come out and play, one of the Hypercourts in Manila got a makeover.
Just like the other Hypercourts that feature sprawling murals of NBA heroes, a special space in the Taguig court for female ballers called Hypercourt for Her has been painted over with the image of WNBA superstar Maya Moore.
“I feel like just having Maya Moore painted on a Hypercourt serves a lot of inspiration for girls and just the fact that they are given opportunity, space to have somewhere to be able to play and not have to worry about judgment I feel like that’s gonna really inspiring for a lot of women,” said Trina Guytingco of the Ateneo women’s basketball team.
Hypercourt for Her was officially launched on Sunday, just a few days after the celebration of the International Women’s Day, with activities like group training sessions with female members of the media and 3×3 competition for women lined up for the day.
‘Hypercourt for Her’ gives women free space to train. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
The Hypercourt app, which offers free and extensive basketball training programs, also got an upgrade to 2.0, with features that are made to cater to the needs of female basketball players in the country.
In the improved version of the app, male and female ballers are featured in the training videos and training sessions for women in the area will be made available.
“The goal is to continue to build the basketball community specifically for the female,” Nike sports marketing manager Jino Ferrer told reporters. “The idea behind the Hypercourt 1.0 was to give a training platform for ballers that is free, because when we started building the innovation behind it we found out that Filipinos love to play but they don’t have a platform for training.”
While the Hypercourt for Her in Taguig and Hypercourt 2.0 app are not exclusive to females, the women ballers get free space and platform to raise their game in basketball.
“Hypercourt is a dual gender initiative, but moving forward but they will be specifically designed for women. We have a focus on helping female ballers to train and progress in the sport of basketball this year,” said Ferrer.
This innovation sparked inspiration among the female athletes in the country, who are hoping to lead the charge in taking women’s basketball to the next level.
“It makes me feel very good [to have this kind of opportunity]. It makes me feel very proud to be a woman basketball player because before when the Hypercourt was first made, [the murals] were both men and now there’s a woman here, there is finally representation,” said Guytingco.