The name is changing: the basketball team of Hapoel B.S. announced today (Tuesday) at its press conference that it will change its name from the upcoming season to Hapoel B.S.-Dimona, as part of a collaboration between the B.S. Municipality, the Dimona Municipality and ICL, a large company from Dead Sea: “We are happy to announce the launch of a regional cooperative, which began between the cities in B.S. Dimona and other commercial companies,” announced Tomer Yaron, the club’s CEO, “This cooperative has been operating for years and we are happy to expand it to the world of basketball. I am happy and proud to say that the group of graduates of the club will be called “Altschuler Shaham” in “S/Dimona” from now on.
As part of the aforementioned collaboration and the change of the team’s name, the location of the club’s games will also change. While the team’s games in the Winner League will continue to be held at the Konchiya Hall in Be’er Sheva, starting next season, the team’s home games within the Balkan League will be held at the hall in Dimona. When asked about the distance of The city of the team’s fans, Yaron said: “The idea of playing in Dimona is to open up basketball to new fans. Dimona is only a short distance from Bash, in Gush Dan there are 4 times more traffic jams than in adjacent cities. The club will be happy to open itself to a new audience and we will also find solutions for our audience, who will be able to get there in a convenient, fast and safe way. Those who are at heart with the team and love the team He will find a way to get there. We are talking about a short distance. The club as a whole is developing in many areas.”
In addition to all of this, the team will establish a basketball school in Dimona and together with the municipalities and the ICL company, an effort will be made to improve the women’s project in the Negev region within two years, with the goal of reaching the senior league of the women’s league. For Benny Biton, the mayor of Dimona, this is the main goal: “I want to emphasize the issue of the women’s team. I told Robik and Kafir, we will be in the Premier League in three years. We will introduce more sponsors to the team, not only the local authorities will contribute. Everyone should participate in the project that we It is called “The Negev Project in Sport”.
It is important to note that this is not a merger between Maccabi Dimona, the team from League A, and Hapoel B.S. The sports cooperation between the cities.
Rubik Danilovich, mayor of the city of Bashkortostan, also commented on the cooperation: “The meeting here today symbolizes our worldview, of a strong and united Negev. No one has a monopoly on anything, we want a strong Negev. I turned to Benny Biton, the mayor of Dimona, after Kafir Erzi (the chairman of the club) has been trying for years to involve more and more parties, to find more partners for this difficult journey, to lead a professional sports team, which plays in the top league and wants to play in Europe, it is not an easy journey. We have decided that if we do not cooperate, the issues will be the exclusive property of certain geographic regions in Israel. It is not enough to establish ourselves as a basketball team here in the Premier League, but we want to break even more boundaries, bring greater achievements, this is what Kafir Manhil as chairman and owner of the team.”