2023-10-08 09:00:00
The long road to being able to build an element that is recognized as a faithful part of an elite is not achieved overnight. Behind the generally successful image of this team, which in a short time has managed to achieve prestige and popularity like no other in the history of Argentine sports, there is sacrifice, work, deprivation and, above all, a lot of passion.
“I want to be Leona” is the dream of any young hockey player who wants to be part of a lineage that is already legendary. Delfina Merino and Belén Succi are two of the most representative exponents of that lineage created just over 20 years ago. and that in its genes it keeps secrets and truths.
Some of them were revealed in the fifth edition of Vérticeswhere the historic players told what it takes to dream of one day being part of that elite body called Las Leonas.
Delfi and Belén were invited to the new talk in the series of interviews organized by the Rio Negro Newspaperwhich this time was held in the auditorium of the Hotel and Casinos of the Río de Cipolletti, which hosted more than 250 people, many of them girls and adolescents who dream of someday wearing the shirt with the legendary Leonine logo designed by Inés Arrondo, symbol of individual dedication in pursuit of collective strength.
I relived the complete talk with Las Leonas
“If you want to achieve high performance, there are things that cannot be negotiated. There are certain guidelines of education and values that have always been in Las Leonas,” says Belén Succi, the historic goalkeeper of the women’s hockey team, who retired last year following winning the silver medal at the World Cup in the Netherlands, following spending 16 years in the Albiceleste arch.
“Now there is more exposure. The photo on Tik Tok or Instagram can show us that we are always happy, but that is not the athlete’s career. We won many finals but we lost more. Behind every medal won there is a process“You have to get up every morning, go to training, sometimes double shifts, and in between, study.”
Belén breathes leadership. In each sentence, in each statement, he hints at the power of command that the team member must have, who sees everything from her position on the court and alone. “Hockey is my passion, but teaching and physical education is my profession,” adds Succi, who retired from the activity being the best goalkeeper in the world.
On the Vértices stage, Succi exchanges glances with Delfi Merino, the explosive forward who debuted in Las Leonas in 2009 until her forced and controversial retirement from the team in 2022shortly before the World Cup in the Netherlands.
Considered the best player in the world in 2017 and today a lawyer, Delfi leaves a sentence: “We are Lionesses in all areas of life, not only when it comes to putting on our shirts and going out to play a game.. We are Lionesses when it comes to getting up and going to train but also when it comes to staying late and being able to study. We are Lionesses when we have to go to work, when we are with our families or friends. Our passion is hockey, but we have to sacrifice.”.
Merino’s message is clear and forceful, admitting that Behind the charming veil of being a Lioness, there is a harsh story of self-sacrifice.
Delfi’s connection with sport and his lifelong club, Banco Provincia, goes back a long way. His great-grandparents were the ones who ran the club’s buffet for a long time, his grandmother, Porota, played tennis until she was 80, and her mother was a hockey player until Delfi was born.
Belén is from CASI, in San Isidro, and her bond with the sport was strengthened by the unconditional support of her mother, a teacher, and her father, a bus driver.. “They would put me on the bike and pedal 40 blocks to take me to hockey. Then another 40 to take me swimming. That was until I decided to be an archer. It is a position where you have to have a lot of mental strength. It was a difficult decision to make at only 15 years old.”
Delfi, who as a girl played soccer as well as the boys in her grade, also played tennis but finally stuck with hockey. “I did it for my friends, I liked group sports much more than a solitary and individualistic one like tennis.”
Welcome to the jungle
Delfi’s call to Las Leonas was in 2009, although in 2007 she was summoned by the coach at the time, Gabriel Minadeo, to play a friendly match in San Juan.
For Belén (4 years older than Merino), the debut was a little earlier, but both remember with great joy the first time they shared a team: it was a trip to a tournament that was held in Bermuda in 2009.
“Many young girls and very few older girls traveled to that tournament,” says Delfi, while Belén notes: “I was one of the oldest, imagine… I was 23.”
Merino continues. “The trip had a stopover in New York, but the connection to Bermuda was suspended due to a snow storm and we had to stay there for three days. walking and enjoying New York. I was only 19 years old, we had a great time.”
Juice. “Hockey allows you to get to know other countries and many cultures. They are experiences that nourish you and open your mind. Until before Las Leonas, I did not know the plane. I went to a good club, but not because of family finances, I received help from the club and my teammates. My mother always encouraged me to follow my dreams with sports but my father, who had not been able to study, told me that I should bring home a degree, which is something that dignifies you.”.
For these Lionesses “Rosario was always close” because it was there where Merino and Succi, being very young, became world champions.
“For me it was like being at Disney, I was the smallest on campus and I said: this can’t be happening to me. When they ask me what my favorite tournament is, sometimes it is difficult to choose because there were many and very nice ones, but Rosario 2010 was very special.
I had to share a squad with players that I had watched on TV not long ago, and suddenly I had to replace Sole García. Three years before I was dying for a photo with Sole García.”
For Belén it was also a pivotal tournament in many aspects, because although he had already had his first big event in Beijing 2008 (bronze) as a substitute for Mariela Antoniska in goal, in Rosario he had to be a starter. She “she was world champion but from then on that title had to be revalidated. “It was my first World Cup and I won.”
The lioness shows her claws
The demands were not free for Belén, who dAfter that tournament he began to suffer panic attacks, even in the middle of the game. “After the World Cup in Rosario, I felt a lot of pressure. Sometimes I was 15′ without action and thinking that a goal might end in a goal, I mightn’t stand it. As it was not a very common pathology at that time, I even played with panic attacks. All that time I was fighting my head. He tried to give everything on the court, but outside he paid dearly.”
Until Belén received news that changed her life forever: She found out she was pregnant. Miraculously, the panic attacks disappeared. Of course, the whole thing had one no less consequence: Succi would miss the 2012 London Olympics. In any case, leaving the panic attacks behind and enjoying his son Bautista definitely tipped the balance.
Delfi touched the sky with her hands when she was chosen as the best in the world at the beginning of 2018, but then she had a knee injury that almost left her out of Tokyo 2020, the pandemic Olympic Games where The Lionesses won the silver medal. “It was a lot of pain to compete in that context. We had to swab ourselves every day, it was very stressful. What we experienced was not easy,” Delfi says that upon returning from Tokyo in 2021, she contracted Covid.
She returned to the team in April 2022 but surprisingly, coach Fernando Ferrara removed her from the list to go to the World Cup in the Netherlands. “They left me out of the mid-World Cup process suddenly, I didn’t see it coming. Today I can tell it because I have talked regarding it a lot, but It was a painful moment because the form was not appropriate.. If you had told me that I had to improve such a thing, I would have done it. What I am most passionate regarding is the Argentine shirt. Now I work every day at my club to be able to return to the national team because I don’t want to say goodbye like that.”.
Belén Succi, who was able to say goodbye as she always dreamed, wishes Delfi would do it too. “I hope I have the chance to wear the national team shirt once more and that I can say goodbye as a player of her category and who has given so much to Las Leonas deserves.”
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