An international partnership: Italian teams compete at Hoopfest for the first time

When Ryan Turcott first approached Gonzaga University officials about an idea to partner with an Italian basketball team, Turcott, the school’s MA Sports Administration Program director, said they looked at him like he was talking nonsense.

But on Wednesday night, Italian youth athletes and their coaches from Pistoia Basket 2000 and DLF Udine Basket landed in Spokane. By Thursday afternoon, the six boys and three girls were warming up in the Trinity Catholic School gym in preparation for Hoopfest.

“Pistoia Basket and Gonzaga University see a lot of value in this partnership, but we had to kind of convince them to get to that point … this is a unique kind of partnership that really isn’t happening across the world,” Turcott said.

“I’m really grateful to be here to learn new things, to discover new things from America,” said Giulia Beconcini, who will be playing on the Pistoia Basket Pink team. “I think this will be difficult, but we’ll enjoy the time here.”

Pistoia and Gonzaga’s partnership began in 2023, and now the youth division for one of Italy’s top teams will be making history as the first Italian teams to compete in Hoopfest.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Turcott said. “But I can tell they’re really advanced.”

But Ettore Cantarutti, who plays for DLF Udine Basket in northeastern Italy, said American basketball is “completely different from the Italian level.”

“It’s a different type of basketball, also with different rules,” he said. “We hope to continue this hobby to let it be our career in the future. So Spokane could be a possibility for us to make us viral, so people can see us and maybe contact us to have more possibilities in the future.”

Despite the language barrier, the Spokanites and young Pistoiesi played some solid basketball.

“Sport is kind of that middle ground that connects us together as humans,” said Scottie Ziegner, a 27-year-old graduate student at Gonzaga’s Sport and Administration master’s program.

“It’s hard to keep up with them because they’re so skilled,” Ziegner continued as he wiped his forehead, dripping with sweat from playing with the Pistoia team. “Honestly, basketball nowadays, the skill level is basically becoming the same across all countries.”

Turcott may have been seen as outlandish when he first pitched the idea, but now he’s the frontman of an international program that helps both parties.

The partnership between Gonzaga and Pistoia isn’t just a bond over basketball and trips across the world; it serves a practical purpose for both sides. Students from Gonzaga work as interns in Pistoia and the greater Tuscany region, focusing on sports management in areas such as hospitality, marketing and merchandise development.

Gonzaga’s study abroad program in Florence began in 1963. Pistoia, only a 30-minute drive from Florence, isn’t only special because it hosts the team that made it to the quarterfinals of Italy’s Serie A this year, the most prestigious professional basketball league in Italy, but because Pistoia is to Italy what Spokane is to the United States: a basketball city.

Despite being in a part of Italy that’s “obsessed with soccer,” Turcott said, Pistoia embraced basketball.

“The environment is just electric. … Everybody’s wearing this shirt, this logo around Pistoia,” pointing at the big white “P” with a bear inside on the red shirt of his friend and colleague Cristiano Biagini, coach of the youth Pistoia athletes.

“There’s a real connection between the city and the community with the teams, just like Gonzaga and Spokane,” Turcott said, recalling the initial trip the Gonzaga sports program took to Pistoia in the summer of 2023.

“They just rolled out the red carpet for us,” Turcott added.

Pistoia’s kindness and hospitality took this partnership beyond sport.

“It’s making those relationships with people,” Ziegner said. “The master program at Gonzaga really does a good job of throwing us into the real world. … They really dive deep into how sports impacts relationships in the world. And really connects us to the people around it.”

“I trust them, and they trust us,” Biagini said. “This experience is not only about sports, but life.”

Turcott said the school has six students in Pistoia right now.

“We had to trust them that they’re going to take care of our students,” Turcott explained.

“I feel like in a comfort zone now,” Biagini said.

The mutual interest in basketball is what makes the pairing special.

“This doesn’t work with any random university or team,” Turcott said. “They’re interested in growing their knowledge about sports, connecting with people from other parts of the world, so I think it really is the people that make this partnership.”