Netta Abugov: Empowering and inspiring women through basketball

Netta Abugov hopes to make history.

The chairwoman of Hapoel Lev Jerusalem – tall, blonde, and manicured, with an infectious smile – Abugov is on a mission to empower women to play basketball.

“Every young boy thinks he is LeBron James. He doesn’t know how to bounce the ball but thinks he is LeBron. And a girl the same age, who is really talented, doesn’t think she can even be something,” Abugov says over morning coffee at Café Shemesh, a media industry favorite. 

“The challenge that I face as the leader of this club is to harness the talent, to get people to join.”

Three years ago, Abugov started the Hapoel Lev basketball club for girls in Jerusalem – “the center of Israel, the center of the world,” she says. It already has more than 500 players.

But the basketball aficionado doesn’t come from the sports world. Abugov has a doctorate in Yiddish; she studied in Antwerp and received a tenured track position at Bar-Ilan University. But just when she was at a turning point in her career, she decided she wanted to do something different.

Around that time, her daughter, Tenne (her name means “the basket that holds Shavuot first fruits,” Abugov explains fondly), started playing basketball for the boys’ team in Kfar Oranim, where they lived, because there was no girls’ team.

“I realized how many challenges there are for female players” in Israel and the world, her mother says.

Helping girls play basketball

BECAUSE TENNE was a girl, she was banned from playing in games against religious boys’ teams. By the end of the season, she had been allowed to participate in only half of the games – nine out of 18.

“I understand, you know – nobody needs to explain to me how sensitive these things are,” Abugov says. After all, her degree was in ultra-Orthodox Yiddish. “But I expected the Israeli Basketball Association to do something. I expected the other team to find the solution and say, ‘Okay, we have these four or five players whose parents agree’ – just something.”

Her daughter was frustrated, so her mother encouraged her to write a letter to then-culture and sport minister Miri Regev, which she did. But for months, there was no response. So Abugov posted the letter online and wrote what became a viral social media post – and the rest is history.

“I already retired from academic life; I did not leave academia for basketball,” Abugov explains. “First I said, ‘Okay, I’m not in my 100% – that’s not 100% what I want.’ So, I left my Yiddish scholarship.” She took those in-between years, doing things like “playing bouzouki [a Greek instrument], swimming, and painting,” she smiles wryly. “And then I realized what was happening – and Tenne’s case really gave me a boost – so I delved into girls’ basketball.”

SHE JOINED the Hapoel Gilboa/Maa’inan basketball club, where her son played at the time, “because I really thought there was potential.”

Within two years, with Abugov as a sponsor and chairwoman of the women’s team, they qualified for the Premier League. But the local council decided it would not provide the funds required for the women to play in the top league.

“I experienced the glass ceiling that has been built in the industry,” she remembers. “I left broken-hearted.”

Meanwhile, she was looking for somewhere for her daughter to keep playing, and they found an opportunity at the YMCA in Jerusalem – where Rebecca Ross, who had been one of Abugov’s players, was coaching. Tenne enrolled there, and her mother would cheer her on at the games.

Eventually, Ross and Abugov decided to open a club together and founded Hapoel Lev Jerusalem. Today, it is the largest club in the Jerusalem area and one of the largest in the country.

“For me, it was clear that I am the head. I take care of all the strategy,” Abugov says. “I put down all the cables, created the floor, and then let the ones who know basketball do the basketball. My role is to make sure the sky is clear.”

“Rebecca is my partner,” she says. “She is in charge of all the professional issues. We work together, and it’s cherry-picking to find the right people to join and do it together with us.”

SHE DESCRIBES the club as both a pyramid and a ball.

A pyramid: “It’s wide. We have community teams, amateur teams at schools, community centers for people with special needs, at-risk youth, women, teenagers, Orthodox, Arabs, secular, whatever is Jerusalem. We want to reach as many players as possible.

“Jerusalem is a very complex, challenging, important place. This is the microcosm of Israel.”

The top of the pyramid is the competitive teams that participate in competitions. At young ages, they compete in the local area, 11th- and 12th-graders compete with all the teams in Israel, and the same goes for the women’s team.

A ball – a round club: “We try to include everything because it is not an after-school activity,” Abugov says. “When a girl comes to play basketball, it is her home. It is not only her home; it is her family’s home. This is her space, this is her time; this is her opportunity to interact with others, to do something that she loves to do.” Even the club’s photographer buys into its mission.

This is especially true now, the club co-founder says – meaning since Oct. 7.

“I always think about my role in this disaster that we still live in,” Abugov muses. “What is our duty as a club at this time? It was obvious to me very quickly: After two weeks, we returned to playing. There were still restrictions for sirens – and if it was a safe place, when the first opportunity came that we could go back to having our activity, that is what we did.”

She says that while parents were initially nervous, they quickly realized how vital basketball was – for their children and themselves.

“You want your children to live. I am not even using an adverb” to describe how: “You just want them to live,” Abugov says, tears welling up in the corner of her eyes.

She says it was tough to start playing again with the hostages still in Gaza and the soldiers fighting, including her son. At first, she thought, “This country is in hell, and we’re playing basketball.” But then she realized, “This is life, and this is what my son and his friends and everyone’s sons and daughters are fighting for – so we can play basketball.”

THE DAY after Abugov met with us, her team won the semi-final against Hapoel Rishon Lezion, reaching the State Cup final – a team that had just joined the Premier League this year. Finishing as the league’s No. 2 in what seems like lightning speed, they were slated to compete for the win against the No. 1, the mighty Elitzur Ramla, on March 7.

Plans are in the offing to tell the world about Hapoel Lev Jerusalem, with merchandise (think jerseys, mugs, and key chains) and female influencer/ambassadors.

But it is not just about medals for Abugov. No, she has a vision for making Jerusalem, Israel, and the people who live here better, to give them better lives.

“What I want to have is a Jerusalem tournament for youth teams – girls – from all over the world coming to Jerusalem, spending time together – three or four days – in workshops, interacting with each other,” the women’s basketball promoter says. “Morocco, Turkey – I don’t know. We have to look further than where we are now.

“It is called hope,” she concludes. “We have to see and believe in that hope.”■