Jérôme Fournier – we work, we work with toughness, we work with smartness

Just before the game in Gorzów Wielkopolski, we are presenting an interview with the head coach of SKK Polonia Warszawa. In our conversation, Jérôme Fournier shares, among other things, his vision of the team building process, his thoughts on youth training in France, and talks about the challenges of his first year at our club and his goals for the recently started Orlen Basket League Women's season. We invite you to read more!

SKK Polonia Warszawa Media Team:

Hello again, Coach! We are talking just after the start of the new season. What emotions accompany this next chapter in the history of Polonia Warsaw's women's basketball section?

Jérôme Fournier, head coach of SKK Polonia Warszawa:

Hello, I could share with you that I am really excited to write this new chapter, challenging all the situations in order to help our process to grow up.

The past year – the first for you in Polonia – was called by the Coach „a season of adaptation”, both in the new realities of sports and life. So, what are the conclusions of this experience, and how did they affect the plans and objectives for the 2024/25 season, which has just begun?

I do not think there are conclusions, but only intentions and one vision. Intentions about how I could adapt my process in a better way, both in Polonia context and to polish culture. I mean that I am a coach with strong expectations from me and from the others, with three very specific cornerstones in my mindset:

·        To work

·        To work with toughness

·        To work with smartness

This organizes a vision oriented towards the high level. For the moment I have to adjust my mindset with our specific conditions in Polonia. A budget with which could not challenge most of the team in polish Ekstraklasa, not easy conditions of practice, because of three different gyms spreaded in Warsaw, with only twice a week access to our home one, I mean in Wilanów. 

So, the plans and the objectives for the 2024/25 season is to make a better season than the previous one and catch the final top eight. But more important than the final sport result is that I would like to bring in Polonia the culture of tough and smart work. I would like to help Polonia to earn more credit and legitimation from our whole environment.

When you are saying „work with toughness”, what do you mean by „toughness”? Is it „determination” or rather strength,” or perhaps „mental toughness” or a combination of „resilience and confidence”?

This is an eternal question about the body and the mind. Toughness has to be considered on both sides. And for sure both are connected, because both are a whole forming a systemic vision.

Work with toughness means work involving the body and the mind with the same „music partition”. Indeed, working with toughness means finding the way to embody what is the best in each of us. So, this process needs on the one hand total involvement with your body in the work, with all your best facilities, in a sacrifice spirit. Work with toughness means you accept to fight, giving your best physical qualities to reach a collective goal.
 

On the other hand, you cannot do this without motivation, auto determination, concentration, open mind, efficient communication and efficient relationships.

Thanks to a good knowledge of yourself, the marriage of body and mind provides self-confidence. This process is very difficult to achieve, but we work on it every day.

In Polonia we are somehow used to the fact that many things have to be fought for, including those that should be standards in a professional club. To what extent was this a surprise and a hindrance for you in your first season? Do you and the staff know now how to deal with it?

This situation was not really a surprise in the first season, because our club President gave me all the details about it. But I thought inside these real brakes I could find an adaptive and flexible environment. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Indeed, so many simple things are really difficult to figure out. I spent a lot of energy trying to fix some of them, instead of thinking about the basketball process.

With the staff we found a way to deal with it, as you said. However, we cannot handle everything, so we focus only on what we can manage. But to be honest, we could deal only until the compromise, without „crossing the Rubicon”. So, we need to assess the process, to figure out what we could do, instead of dealing with this current situation.

Coming to Polonia, you were given a difficult task by President Lukasz Tusiński - to implement a new vision of sports advancement at our club. The dream and mission of Polonia Warsaw basketball is to develop Polish basketball talents – not only young ones – so that they contribute to the Poland national team and will be able to compete in the top leagues in the world. How do you evaluate this process after the first season of cooperation and to what extent this vision is realistic, or perhaps requires adaptation to the existing realities in our country?

For the moment – in my opinion – we must be reasonable with this vision. Indeed, to work on this „dream” and „mission,” we need to create other conditions. We need a strong and unique sports infrastructure (Polonia’s arena) that we can use whenever we need. Moreover, we need to offer young Polish basketball talents all the best conditions to welcome them to Warsaw (accommodation, logistics, etc.). We need to convince older talented Polish basketball players to come to Polonia with strong prospects (EuroCup, EuroLeague) and/or a good budget for them. We also must have a larger sports staff with full contracts and with extra competence.

So, for now, the key words are patience and wisdom about it. Let's try to give our best with what we have and „krok po kroku” see how things turn out. Moreover, and more importantly in this situation, we share the same vision with President Łukasz. We are on the same page. We know each other's strengths and brakes. Overall, we know each other, which is the path to give our process a real added value.

What idea did you have in mind when rebuilding Polonia's roster for the new season? What guided you in the selection of players – how much was determined by their volitional qualities, basketball skills necessary for the execution of tactics, or perhaps other, less obvious motives?

My first idea was to keep some Polish players from the previous season, who could involve in our process. So, the two conditions were required. First, to be ready to work, to work with toughness, to work with smartness. And the second one to speak English fluently. Thus, Anna Pawłowska, Klaudia Sosnowska, Alicja Janczak and Marta Masłowska answered these conditions and more.

My second thought was to recruit one or two young players (U23) among the good ones in Poland. For example, I have had very close contact with Magdalena Szymkiewicz and Wiktoria Zasada. Unfortunately, it did not work, because of two things: budget and no games in EuroCup. We recruited Kornelia Bukowczan and we are really satisfied with it. But our goal was to develop a specific strategy to attract the best ones. It did not work this time. I hope for the next we can convince some of them to come to Polonia. We know right now what we need for it.

My third strategy was to find Polish players with this specific mindset about the work, while respecting our budget. We found Bożena Puter and Marzena Marciniak, who are out two "Swiss knife" players, which is very interesting for us.

In our conversation, Coach Fournier talks about his roster building strategy for the 2024/25 season; photo by Krawczyk.photo

At the end, my strategy about foreigners was to recruit two insides and two outsides. We needed four players, because it was really difficult to recruit only three with four senior Polish and our three U23 players on our roster. This decision was a balancing act, considering the budget available for contracts.

However, me and my staff found four interesting foreigners, each with a unique characteristic, while sharing the same values:

·        Serena Manala is very tall and has good hands.

·        Dasha Dubniuk is really quick and has a nice capacity to score.

·        Sierra Moore is really strong, with an interesting competency to defend all positions.

·        Javyn Nicholson is really skilled with the ball, with a real ease to have a fun with the ball regards to her body.

All four of them share good energy and genuine real enthusiasm to help Polonia and the team to grow. At the end, all four are ready to work, to work with toughness, to work with smartness… for this moment.

How do you rate the preseason preparations? What did you focus on the most and how much has been achieved at this point?

My assessment of the preseason is quite good. What I mean is that we did what we thought we needed to do to prepare our team in good conditions: good practices, challenging tournaments, tough games, good recovery, no injuries, team building and common expectations.

We focused the most on how each player could find her status, her roles, her tasks and her missions in the team in and outside the court. And at this point the process is still ongoing. Indeed, we need the truth of the competition to achieve it. So, I guess that in two or three games we will know the answers on this topic.

During the break between seasons, the foundations of Polonia Warsaw women basketball youth academy were also established. Has this somehow affected the functioning of the senior team? How has the collaboration with coach Maciej Szelągowski been going in this area?

First of all, I was really happy to be there when it happened. Indeed, I really think the development of polish basketball needs a lot of academies connected with a high level (ekstraklasa). Indeed, this process allows young players to dream, and we know the dream is the beginning of any development project. Moreover, when young players can practice at the top level in a country, in the end this helps all of them to grow.

I remember what happened with female basketball in France at the beginning of our “golden years”. These were two important things. First of all, more than 30 years ago French national basketball federation (FFBB; Fédération Française de Basketball) decided to create a national center in INSEP (Institut national du sport, de l'expertise et de la performance). I know it, because I worked there for 10 years, being a part of it. Second of all, at the time of Małgorzata Dydek in France at USVO Valenciennes and other international players at CJM Bourges Basket, FFBB decided to create a championship with young players (U18 to U23). This championship looks a lot like todays first division in Poland, with the second teams of the top league.

Thanks to this decision young French players were able to practice with stars like Dydek and others and couple of years later this double process – INSEP and more second teams in Ligue Féminine de Basketball (LFB, French ekstraklasa) have brought out a new generation of players, who reached the final of EuroBasket in 1999 in Katowice (and lost against…Poland national team!) and won championship of Europe in France in 2001. And we know, what happened next…

Going back to the question, the arrival of the academy did not have a big impact on the senior team. We just needed to adapt our schedule and adjust some logistics of the away games. But these things are details. I prefer observing this new organization with a positive point of view and as an opportunity to create dreams and vocations.

Cooperation with Maciej Szelągowski (first on the left) is going great; photo by Magda Tronina

About my collaboration with coach Maciej Szelągowski, it’s just perfect for me. Indeed, we are on the same page. I mean, I really appreciate his attitude and his posture in our system. You need to know that I am really sensitive about human relationships and human development. So, I am so glad to work with Maciej. I appreciate his great humility, and his authentic well-careness. Every day he gives his best to facilitate my job, and we even share problems (because we have to figure out different problems every day), I appreciate the way we solve them together… we work, we work with toughness, and we work with smartness.

In some way referring to the previous question. You have vast experience and excellent achievements in training basketball youth, including the French national teams. If you had to define two qualities each that you would like to transfer from French young basketball players to Polish talents and in the other direction, what would they be? In other words - what advantages do you see in each nation that the other is missing?

Very difficult question, because to choose only 2 qualities to define global and complex systems – French and Polish – is not easy and I do not want to reduce each one to only two personal ideas. But anyway, in this Cartesian world, I put some words in a box.

Coach Fournier shared his thoughts on France's youth national team coaching system; photo by FIBA

About French, I could say boldness and emotional control. The boldness is totally embodying with Marine Johannès, who plays basketball in competition daring everything what some coaches could forbid, daring to do everything the common mind cannot afford. And emotional control, because French young talents understood they could make mistakes without being punished, they understood that regardless of the outcome of their performance, their relatives would love them in the same way, and nothing will change. And when you understand both and when your coaches help you in this process, then you can grow up in a confident and safe environment, which helps 100% in your learning.

About Polish young talents I could say discipline and collective spirit. Discipline to execute what the staff expects. Time from time this discipline could be a brake to develop boldness, but time from time it’s necessary to play on the same page. Collective spirit, because I appreciate in the young polish talents their way to live as a team, their way of living the national feeling when they represent Poland. We have the same in France, but in Poland this situation seems more natural. In France we have to organize a process to reach it.

At the inauguration in Warsaw, Polonia played a game against Polski Cukier AZS UMCS Lublin. The rival team seems to be built according to a different key than ours, where we have a lot of experienced Polish players and foreign basketball players completely new to our domestic league. Coach Krzysztof Szewczyk, on the other hand, has relied on international names proven in Basket Liga Kobiet, we have two returners to the lineup there, and the Polish players are still relatively young – only two of them have left the U23 category. How do you evaluate the clash of these two slightly different concepts on the court?

This is a really surprising question to me. Indeed, we could talk about a concept if and only if at the beginning each one decided to build his team following a real conception.

 My point is that if I were able to choose a concept, I would probably choose to build the way AZS UMCS Lublin did, and perhaps if Lublin had a bigger budget, they would build their team in another way. May be following the same way as Bourges Basket in France… So, this is really tough to evaluate a clash than no one fully decides at the beginning.

I also have to be precise that the main young U23 players and one U24 one from Lublin have a lot of experience in FIBA competitions – EuroCup, EuroLeague, youth national teams – I mean time on the floor and more responsibility for scoring. Taking this argument into account, we could arrange this question in a different way...

Thus, following your argumentation – in a club team, typically you don't have the comfort of working with the best in the country – like with national teams. There are also the limitations that you mention – budget, available infrastructure, lack of competition in EuroCup, etc. How new is this situation for you as a coach, and how challenging is it to nevertheless mold the best possible team and still try to attract talented and hard-working players?

This situation is not new for me, because I lived something similar 10 years ago, when I was the coach in Toulouse (LFB, French ekstraklasa). The big difference was we practiced in our own arena, but for the rest I functioned the same way (not strong budget, no EuroCup, etc…). The way I choose at this time, and I decided to select it again Poland, was to focus only on the mentality of the players and the dynamics of the team. In other words, if we could not work with the best players, let us try to build the best team mindset. And this is a strong challenge, considering our conditions – but a very exciting challenge!

Now before our team and staff is a tough game in Gorzów. Difficult also because the vice-champions of Poland, after losing in the league in Gdynia and a heavily surprising defeat in EuroCupWomen in Chomutov, will need a game to break this weaker streak. What is the atmosphere in Polonia before this encounter? What mind-set will you and your team want to achieve for this game?

I am just answering this question sitting on the bus to Gorzów. For sure their team needs a win to get revenge for themselves and for their fans. So, we expect a really tough game. We prepare it in the same way as the others, respecting our process. I mean the beginning of the week is spent to figure out our last mistakes and to reinforce what worked well. The second part of the week is about the scouting of our next opponents and the building of different strategies, depending on our rivals.

So, the atmosphere is „ready and focus” – to be ready when the opportunity will cross our preparation.

What are your team goals for this season? What are your personal aims, related to the development of Polonia and its players?

 As I said earlier, the team goal is to reach the top eight and after that we will see how we can advance. Moreover, I would like my team to improve day after day, to give the best basketball show for all of us, for SKK Polonia Warszawa and our fans. I would like my team to play better and better, game after game – to win the important games at the end.

Head Coach of Polonia respects the history and heritage of our club; photo by Krawczyk.photo

My personal aims related to the development of Polonia is to grow with the club, to learn with it and to feel and observe how SKK Polonia wants to improve day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year In terms of player development, my personal goal is to contribute to helping each of them to reach her best level, respecting the values of SKK Polonia.

What do you think is likely to be our strongest point as a team?

 100% of our NRJ – NRJ in French means energy: En (N) er (R) gy (J) – is to improve together and keep the process together.

100% of our NRJ is to step on the floor and fight in the defense.

Which opponent in the polish league do you consider the most powerful?

Nie wiem, I want to focus on my team and only on my team.

What would you like to say to Polonia fans and the entire club community at the start of the season?

Prosimy, bądźcie gotowi wspierać nas licznie w dobrych i złych chwilach. W świecie, w którym procesy oddziaływania są wszechobecne, liczymy na to, że będziecie mieć wpływ na wszystko, na co tylko możecie, aby pomóc naszemu zespołowi dzielić się z Wami jak największą liczbą zwycięstw!

Thank you for this interesting conversation and I wish you good luck for the new season, to achieve all your goals and to continue the development of SKK Polonia Warszawa!

Title photo - by Krawczyk.photo

Głównym Partnerem Klubu SKK Polonia Warszawa podczas krajowych i europejskich rozgrywek jest m. st. Warszawa, które wspierając od lat koszykówkę kobiet i inne dyscypliny sportowe, przyczynia się do promocji aktywności ruchowej społeczeństwa