Few volleyball teams can boast in the Canary Islands, and even in Spain, of the history and successes that the Rafael Afonso Group has achieved. San Roque, a modest club in a popular neighborhood of Las Palmas who has always had his brain in the quarry and who has arrived this year in European competition.
Who was going to tell Esteban González, back in 1970 when he founded the club with his brothers within the old National School in the San Roque neighborhood, that 54 years later they were going to face a Norwegian rival in a continental tournament? “For our youth team, seeing a team that we are not used to seeing, from Norway, is a real gift,” he comments in statements to EFE in the heart of the club: the El Batán sports pavilion.
There, from Monday to Friday, some 350 children practice a very complete sport like volleyball and they cultivate the values that San Roque has always wanted to transmit: effort and teamwork.
It is precisely this quarry that has lifted them to the continental competition, a school of which they are proud of the achievements obtainedfor what it means for the neighborhood, and increasingly for the entire city as young people come from different parts of it, and for the sacrifices they have had to make to get it to the place where it is now.
The president of the entity for just over a year, and a resident of the neighborhood, Miguel Angel Hernandezwho knows what it's like to be on the board of directors of other clubs like Guaguas, details that many times “results are asked for” and the youth team does not give them, which is why it is usually relegated to the background.
But little by little those teams that “did not treat their base sport with affection” have been realizing how important it is to cultivate passion for each discipline from an early agealthough it is very expensive in economic and sporting terms.
Esteban González does not doubt it: “It is very difficult, and also very expensive, to train a player from lower categories and that he becomes a first-team starter at some point.
However, the club does not focus on the results, but is very clear about the function it fulfills in its closest environment, that popular neighborhood of San Roque, one of the centers that climb the so-called “cliffs” of Las Palmas, which have become so famous as a tourist image, but which so many efforts and sacrifices of local residents hide among its streets.
González and Hernández agree that they are a “team of friends” who have had as main social purpose “to integrate young people from the neighborhood” at first to eventually expand throughout the city and reach more points.
All of this “without being in a hurry to advance”, working like ants to achieve the results they have been achieving. For example, last year They participated in 14 Canary Islands championships in different categoriesboth female and male, and achieved a whopping ten medals, four gold, four silver and two bronze.
“Our main value is the youth team, and the youth team will always be above everything, so we have to compete in competitions with head“says Esteban González, in a social work that for them “is super important.”
And what they have achieved shows them that daily work is the fundamental thing, and that the fact that the first men's team is in the highest category of national volleyball “It's the culmination, it's very nice.”
The president of the club, while witnessing the training of many of the quarry teams, comments on how the space in the municipal pavilion, which shared with other uses, they have already become too small for the number of young people they train.
Of Monday to Friday, around 350 volleyball players pass through the facility and the demand is even greater, to the point that they have had to leave many boys and girls on the reserve list, they clarify.
A situation that has arisen, above all, as a result of the pandemic, when many parents have opted for their children to do more physical exercise. But also because of a cartoon series in which images of volleyball are seen and that has sown the seed in many boys and girls.
And, of course, it has also influenced that Las Palmas is a national volleyball reference, with up to five teams – two men's and three women's – in the highest categories and competing at the best level.
And, precisely evento maintain that quarry work and gain space, the priority objective is to “consolidate” in the highest category, after having achieved what for many was a surprise last year: staying in the Super League.
“I think the key word would be 'consolidate ourselves'in the top category, but not with a view to being there for a year, but rather being there in the middle of the table and having a consolidation that I think is what we need right now,” says Miguel Ángel Hernández.
And to this end, the importance of the fans will be vital. Last year, the municipal pavilion of El Batán became “in a fort”, to the point that both for Hernández As for González, many matches as host were won by playing the golden set thanks to a fan that “annoyed the rival a lot.”
And the thing now baptized as GRA San Roque, with its first major sponsorship after a year of surprises, threatens to continue giving a lot of fight in the categorybuilding their achievements on the strong foundations of their youth team, and giving a popular neighborhood in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria great evenings of volleyball at the highest level, now also in Europe.
