MIAMI (United States) – The Argentine U18 National Team had its first training camp to begin preparation for the South American U18 Men's Championship, which will be played in Caracas (Venezuela), at the José Joaquín "Papa" Carrillo Gymnasium, from March 21 to 26. A camp that is intended to continue to build solid training habits and basketball fundamentals.

In charge is Herman Mandole, Coordinator of Training for all national team levels, who said that the camp in Saladas (Corrientes) is focused not only on the South American in March and the FIBA Americas in June, but mainly helping and evaluating the status of players working on a common goal, that of continuing to develop them and improve individually by generating solid, long lasting habits.

"The ultimate goal is to develop these young players so that in a few years they can be contributors to the senior team,” Mandole said. “We’re looking to teach and instill good habits, the closest thing to high performance so that they can replicate it in their clubs in a long time. Repetition is the key for them to learn it and be able to continue it.

The camp was attended by the coach of the senior national team, Néstor García, with the main objective of working together with all the coaches at all levels of the national teams, thinking about the future. The coach closely followed the training sessions, scrimmages and the work of the staff.

Three daily training sessions, preventive and pre-training work was Mandole's work methodology, who was an assistant to Julio Lamas in the Japanese National Team before joining the Argentine Basketball Confederation (CAB) this year. In addition, the camp saw the incorporation of the Bio-Banding system, a program that is used throughout the world, but especially in the United States, to assess the physiological rather than chronological age of players.

"The goal is to improve and provide knowledge in personal care, rest, training and nutrition and always with the idea of generating reading and study habits.”

From his experience in Japan, the coach said that, although he had no direct involvement with the younger teams, he participated in several camps as coordinator and has learned one very important fact.

“The big difference between one country and another is the history that each one has. For several years, Argentina has participated in the largest world competitions in all of its categories.”

A staff was made up of coaches from all over the South American country and, for the first time, with player development trainers such as Mariano Sánchez who is an internationally renowned coach and NBA trainer who was a personal coach to the former captain of the Argentine National Team, Luis Scola and on some occasions for shooting guard Manu Ginóbili and other NBA players, which helped enhance the main objective of the project.

“I try to find the identity of the team to compete with the best powers in the world,” Sánchez said about the goals of the camp. “I want to get results. To play very good competition we need more development time. We were able to evaluate data and work on effectiveness and control. We don't have many players and we have to look for individuals who have the same mentality of success, the exact example that the Golden Generation left us.”

For Sanchez it was a very different but very rewarding process.

“It was an extraordinary challenge, something that has moved me personally in a big way. I had not been able to be involved until this opportunity, in the development of amateur players as I was at the other extreme when working with Scola, Ginóbili and other NBA players. Mandole convinced me to be in this process and conveyed to me the passion and responsibility for this project, which is trying to change what has been done before with the national teams and that is to develop players over a longer period of time.”

FIBA