Sabrina Ionescu kept things simple when asked about what she thinks would be actionable steps toward closing the gap between enthusiasm and actual opportunities in the Philippines, a basketball-crazed country where women’s play is still emerging.

“I think the kind of messaging would just be ‘To continue pouring into the youth,’” she said in a chat with select reporters on Tuesday morning n Makati City.

“Letting them believe that they could go out and accomplish whatever it is they want to do through sport and being able to kind of pour into what their dreams are. [And that] starts at a really young age,” the guard for New York Liberty in the WNBA went on.

Ionescu is currently in town for a multicity tour across Asia to promote her new sneaker with Nike. The Paris Olympics gold winner has been making a tour of the basketball hotspots across the city and capped off Tuesday’s leg with an electric show with the country’s finest and rising stars at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.

Regarded as a trailblazer in the sport, Ionescu has been championing equity and visibility for women, a pursuit that she has taken on since her record-shattering collegiate career with the Oregon Ducks and her continued brilliant play in the pros, where she has recently become a champion.

“It’s been kind of fun to be here in this community, participating in camps and seeing all the young kids who want to be basketball players, and knowing that that was me not too long ago,” she said.

While women’s basketball has experienced considerable growth in the Philippines in the past years, it has yet to reach the popularity its male counterpart has enjoyed.

Ionescu’s approach is as simple as it is effective as it begins at a grassroots level through instilling belief in girls. In a country where institutional support, media visibility, and post-varsity pathways continue to be limited, her pitch offers realistic steps towards growing the sport.

“I think it’s possible if you just continue to pave the way for [girls] to be able to dream of becoming whatever it is they want to,” she said.

Ionescu is scheduled to visit Bulacan this Wednesday, marking a return to the province where she played during the Fiba 3×3 World Cup. She concludes her Philippine tour with a clinic with Girls Got Game Home Court at Sacred Heart Academy in Sta. Maria.

Ionescu would’ve been able to meet Jack Danielle Animam, a Bulacan native, if the latter was playing at home. Instead, the Gilas Pilipinas fixture is in Romania, plying her trade due to the limited playing avenues for women after college.

The American guard is also slated to visit Guangzhou and then Hong Kong for her Asia tour. INQ