Varese restarts with Giannis Kastritis
Giannis Kastritis in Varese
Giannis Kastritis è the new coach of Varese Basketball. It was announced by the Red and White club itself: "Pallacanestro Varese è happy to announce the agreement reached with Giannis Kastritis, Greek coach who from today will hold the role of head coach of Openjobmetis. Kastritis è his first experience in the Italian league, but he has a long career in Europe behind him; at’the beginning of this season he was at the helm of’Aris Thessaloniki, a team he led in both the league and EuroCup".
"We are excited to welcome coach Kastritis to Varese,” said general manager Zachary Sogolow. His experience and quality as a coach are characteristics that made him attractive to our club from the start, but his energy and passion for the game of basketball, which we believe will be contagious to players and fans, are the attributes that we feel can be instrumental in achieving our goals for this and the coming seasons";
Born in Tripoli on April 4, 1982, Kastritis, after a brief career as a player in his homeland, soon donned the coaching robes by joining the technical staff of the youth teams of Apollon Patras’Apollon Patras. In 2006 he began his career as an assistant, first for Olympiada Patras and then for Arkadios, a formation whose head coach he became in 2012. The’opportunity è good to prove all his worth: in a couple of seasons, in fact, he leads his team to promotion to the Greek top league, an achievement that earns him the award of coach of the’year in the second division.
In the 2016-2017 season he became coach of Aries Trikala leading it to the best result in its history thanks to a 10th place in the league accrued thanks to 10 wins and 16 losses. This was followed by experiences at Kymis, Aris Thessaloniki and Iraklis Thessaloniki, before trying his hand abroad as head coach of Hapoel Tel Aviv. After only one season, however, he returned to Greece at the helm of’Aris Thessaloniki, a formation with which he had also started the current season.
Parallel to his club career, Kastritis also gained important experience with the youth national teams of Greece. Specifically è he was the coach of the Greek Under-19 national team during the 2019 FIBA Under-19 World Cup, in which the Hellenic lineup è ranked 10° place.
