Today is Arbe's training day. She has moistened her scoop with water because the wicker needs to be damp in order not to break. She tells us that she keeps it the washroom at home. "You have to take great care of it". It takes around 25 hours of work to hand-make a scoop and nowadays, with hardly any scoop-makers left – apparently there are only five left in the Basque Country – there is a need for people from the younger generation to carry on the craft. "They're trying out carbon scoops now, looking at very modern materials…" She puts her helmet on and jumps into the pilota court, where two lads and the trainer are waiting for her. Arbe is small, but seems to grow on the court, hitting the ball with incredible force. It is an incredibly sight from the stands. They say it is the fastest sport in the world because of the speed the ball reaches. The 22 year-old girl from Markina became fascinated by jai alai at a very early age. "The way of gathering the ball up with the scoop, the sound when you serve, the charm that the hand-made scoops have, it being one of our own sports… Jai alai stands out from other sports."

She picked up a scoop for the first time when she was eleven, inspired by watching her elder brother, Jokin Arbe, playing. Her parents helped her to join the Markina-Xemein club, and she was well received there. Being the only girl, though, she has had to overcome many obstacles along the way. "The pilota court's a wholly masculine area and, amongst other things, one of my first impressions was ‘What's she doing here?’ There are all types of people and I've had to listen to all sorts of things." At around fourteen, when she started to notice the difference between herself and the boys as far as strength was concerned, and after taking part in a championship, one of the organizers said to her: "You shouldn't be playing with the boys any more, you should be playing with girls." Arbe gets upset as she remembers it: "Well, there weren't any more girls! Did he want to get rid of me, or what? But at that age you don't have enough resources to deal with that. You're alone, you make a double effort to be the same as the others, but, instead of being appreciated for it, you hear things like that." She has also heard opponents saying "Do I have to play against a girl?" because some of them are uncomfortable about playing against a girl or losing to her. "But, in general, in my experience, I've got on really well with the other players", she underlines.

Although she does sometimes feel alone, the support she gets at home has been very important to her. "My brother's always been by my side, always ready to teach me, especially when I had to deal with those ugly faces and comments at the beginning." Jokin Arbe has been playing professionally in the States since last January.

And she is left-handed.

Strength is an important characteristic in jai alai, and from one moment onwards she started playing against younger lads from Markina in order to play more equal games. As well as being the eldest, she had to stop playing in official championships because she was above the age limit for her category, and the Federation did nothing to sort the situation out. Training all the time with youngsters, without playing any particularly exciting matches, "was tough in terms of motivation", she says. At one time another girl played along with her, but gave it up when she saw what the situation was. But Arbe is not the type of person to desist, above all remembering how tough it was for her at first: she is left-handed and it is compulsory to play using your right hand. It took her a year of determined practice to learn how to do that. She did wonder about playing left-handed but, although there is nothing about that in the rules, it does not seem to be accepted. We asked her if she had tried playing left-handed. "A girl and also left-handed! What do you want them to do, throw me right out of the court?" she laughs.

At the time when her motivation faltered, she also started playing with a bat. Thanks to projects such as Emakumea Pilotari ('Women Pilota Players'), most women play with a bat on pilota courts. Because the infrastructure, championships and facilities given lead to results. "It says a lot that more than 80% of women playing with a bat today have come from some other form of the game. Many of the top-level women players who use a bat have played with their hands previously.” Arbe realised that, but "what really satisfied me was jai alai, and if I wanted to go ahead with that, I was going to have to do it for myself: nobody was going to do it for me." She laid aside her bat and committed herself to jai alai, managing to turn things around and open the way for up-and-coming generations.

Going from unmotivated to strong

"I've won my own space little by little. It's been hard, but I've managed it, and now I'm just another player at the Markina-Xemein pilota court. If I had to sum up what I've done, I'd say I'm a person who doesn't give up on what she wants." And that is no mean feat. After studying to be a teacher in Gasteiz, Arbe was happy to return to her home town. Now she trains twice a week, plays a friendly on Fridays with boys of all ages (11, 15, 18…) and they have started organizing championships between women as part of the Xistera project (they have held three so far). There are also French and Catalan players, and they have met up with them. The plan is for them to all get together in the Basque Country at the end of October. In Catalonia, two of the ten women jai alai players have given up; in France, on the other hand, their number has gone up, and there are now around 15 of them. Since last year, there is another woman playing in the adult category in Donostia: Leire Arribas. The most important thing is that there is now a pool of young players

Jai alai is a sport which is in decline. The Basque Country associations have got together and started the Xistera project to make it become more popular again. It addresses three main areas: promoting championships among non-professional players, promoting women's participation, and teaching children about jai alai at schools. Izaro is strongly involved with this area, and she says it is a great step forward: "This school year we'll be going to twelve towns, and that means that a load of pupils are going to hear about the sport. The aim is for all children to be able to try it, and the fact that their reference is going to be a woman is very important. Three years ago, I started training children in Durango and Berriatua; their previous trainer had been a man and, from zero girls, two weeks after I started there were 14 of them all of a sudden!"

Arbe herself has had very few references as very few women have played jai alai. "I think a lot of women have probably tried it, but they didn't go ahead with it. Strangely enough, women's point of entrance in Basque pilota was jai alai: Maria Unzueta, from Eibar, played jai alai at the end of the 19th century, she was a good player and they gave her the chance to play professionally, but her father forbade it."

"Now, eight year-old girls who want to play jai alai don't find themselves alone."

After teaching jai alai to children in Durango and Berriatua, Arbe qualified as a Basque pilota trainer and has been active in Markina-Xemein since last year. She works at Bekobenta school with children between six and twelve. There are around twenty of them, of whom around fourteen are girls. "The idea is to go on to the big pilota court once they've learned a little." There are around one hundred jai alai players in total in the town.

Arbe is not interested in training when people just go home after playing their matches. Playing jai alai, games connected with the sport, creating a group spirit… More than physical activity, they work on values at the training sessions. "They all work together, which is right for primary education: boys and girls, from all different origins, ages mixed up together… Sport is a good tool for working on coexistence, an excuse to get people who don't know each other to do things together, and I try to develop all of that, I don't want any boy to say 'I don't want to play with girls'".

Izaro is happy, pleased that her work is bearing its fruit and hopeful about the group which has girls in it too: "Nowadays, an eight-year-old girl who wants to play jai alai isn't by herself, there are other girls in the group, it'll be easier to carry on with it in the future." She is very glad to be working as a trainer, and with her playing too. How many prejudices have you broken down? "I don't know about prejudices, but I have changed the way people see it. There are all sorts. Some people will ask 'What is this jai alai player up to?', and others will say "Good for you, Izaro! You've done what I didn't."

[This article was translated by 11itzulpen; you can see the original in Basque here.]