In this Daily -- La Locura de Marzo
Flat temperatures today, reaching a mid 80s peak at 9am and hanging there pretty consistently throughout the day. Onshore winds in the afternoon will mix the surf up, and we're expecting mild to moderate swell throughout the day. Water temperatures have been just about perfect recently, with moderate visibility.
It's the end of La Locura de Marzo tonight -- the enormous 64 team tournament in American college basketball that seizes the attention of the U.S. for an entire month -- so in honor of that event we decided to take a look at Costa Rican basketball, a small but vibrant community for the sport you may not have known even existed. Basketball arrived in Costa Rica about 15 years after its creation in the later 1800s by Prof James Naismith, where it slowly began to grow popular for both men and women, seeing the first matches in the late 1910s and the first international matches by the 1930s and 1940s.
The country's golden age of Costa Rican basketball is considered twofold. For women, 1935-1940 are considered the greatest era in the sport, thanks to superstar Avis McClean, while for men the golden age was the later half of the 1950s, as the sport reached its peak popularity all around the Carribean and Central America. The biggest achievements for the country have come from the women's side, who came third in Centrobasket, the Central American Champions League of Basketball, and reached a pre-World Cup qualifier.
Nowadays, the sport has two semi-professional leagues, and a slowly growing infrastructure to support the sport, with courts scattered around the country able to be found a short drive from most towns. We even have a few just a short drive from town, and if you make your way out there's a chance you might spot a few faces from town.
And if you're interested in watching the end of March Madness, you can catch the broadcast on the second floor of Limonada tonight at 7:20pm.
Upcoming Events
Tonight
- NCAA Basketball National Championship @Limonada: 7:20pm
Tomorrow
- Pilates @ Casa Chameleon: 9am
- Cuba Libre @ Beach Club: 6pm
Thursday
- Yoga Nidra @ Casa Chameleon: 8:45am
Sunday
- Brunch @ Ponciana: 10am