The 2024 Nigerian Women’s Basketball National Team that qualified for the
Paris Olympics.
@FIBA / COURTESY
By Isaiah Rosario, Sports Editor
Former Manhattan College women’s basketball assistant coach and current Stony Brook assistant coach Rena Wakama made history this month and led the Nigerian women’s basketball team to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The former Nigerian national team player has the opportunity to add more to the history books with an Olympic medal.
Nigeria defeated Senegal in the FIBA Qualifying Olympic Tournament and were able to qualify for the Olympics, despite losing to Team USA 100-46 on the day that they qualified. En route to qualifying, Nigeria beat team Senegal 72-65 and lost to the Belgium national team 78-61.
The Nigerian national team will be heading back to the sport’s biggest stage, the Olympics. They will make back-to-back appearances in the Olympics, as they appeared in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“This is a milestone,” Wakama said. “Something that I didn’t realize that meant a lot to me, my family, my friends, my supporters, and people that I don’t even know. I didn’t realize how big of an accomplishment this was until maybe a couple of days ago after things died down and settled down, and I thought ‘Wow, I’m going to the Olympics. I’m an Olympian!’ I’ve put in a lot of work, and to see the fruits of my labor pay off now is amazing, so I’m super thankful and blessed.”
The journey did not come easy for Wakama and her staff as she was told that she would need to build the national team’s roster from scratch. When Wakama was notified that she would be assuming the role of head coach, she did not have any players on the roster.
“About three weeks after the first week of July, they told me I need to put a team together and I need to recruit,” Wakama said. “To be honest with you, I went through old friends. I did everything I could to try to get players and we practiced for about seven days and we headed to Rwanda to compete and history wrote itself. A lot of challenges, but I’m thankful for them because it made my team and myself resilient, just to be able to focus and come together at a very crucial time.”
When basketball teams look to hire a new coach, it is relatively rare when those hiring target people they are not familiar with or have not been around. The current head coach for the Jaspers, Heather Vulin, did not know much about Wakama while conducting interviews.
Wakama was in North Carolina during the time phone interviews were taking place between her and Vulin. Vulin was so impressed over the phone interview that she decided to fly her up to New York for the interview. Vulin instantly noticed that Wakama was a winner and never looked back.
Wakama spent six years with the Jaspers. She spent her first two years at the college as director of women’s operations and spent the last four years as an assistant coach under Vulin’s squad.
As an assistant coach at MC, Wakama oversaw the development of wings and guards and served as the team’s academic and community service liaison. During her tenure at the college, the women’s basketball team earned a program-high 3.61 team GPA and placed fifth nationally in community service hours for Division I women’s basketball.
“I loved every single second working with her and honestly I get emotional when I think of the success that she’s had with the Nigerian team because the beautiful thing about this is she played on the [national team] as a player,” Vulin said. “It absolutely blows my mind that someone that grew up through that program is now leading the program and I can tell that every single one of her players wants to run through a brick wall for her because that’s the type of energy, compassion, and passion that she brings to the table. I love her with all my heart. I miss her every day.”
Wakama was able to retrieve valuable lessons from her time at MC from Vulin and her staff, including making sure that people are always looked at as a person first before a player or a coach and lets everyone be themselves.
Wakama made sure that lesson was brought to the Nigerian national team as she did not want to put the players in a box. She believes good results arise when you let people be themselves. She reiterated that mentality would be her biggest takeaway from her time at MC.
Wakama worked closely with two players who are currently on the active roster for the Jaspers: Anne Bair and Petra Juric. In 16 minutes per game during the 2022-23 season, Bair averaged 1.8 points per game, 1.8 rebounds and 42 assists on the season. In 27.3 minutes per game, Juric averaged 10.6 points and seven rebounds during the 2022-23 season.
“Coach Rena is a great coach,” Bair said. “She has a great knowledge of the game and I think that she’s just so hands-on and so passionate about the game. She was always talking to me, encouraging me, motivating me but also being really hard on me. I think the hardest workouts I’ve had were with coach Rena, [they were] super demanding, super high energy … and she always just wanted to get the best out of her players and I love that about her.”
During Bair’s second year with the program, in 36.3 minutes per game, she is averaging nine points per game, 2.6 rebounds per game, and 78 total assists on the season. Bair stated that one aspect of Wakama’s philosophy is the passion that she brings every day.
“She brought so much energy which aligned with how I like to play and what I tried to bring into practice every day,” Bair said. “She didn’t have off days, even when she was going through hard things in her personal life, she was always just bringing so much energy and love for the game to our group. It is a family and I think that she instilled that in me for sure.”
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are set to take place from July 26 to Aug. 11. Although the Olympics are months away, qualifying tournaments for the games are still ongoing.