Nigeria’s female basketball team, D’Tigress on Monday stunned the world with a decisive victory over Australia’s Opals at Paris 2024.
Australia’s team of skilled players is ranked No.3 by FIBA but they were defeated by the four-time African champions by 13 points.
The young female Head Coach of D’Tigress is one of those being celebrated fans especially back home for the historic feat which is also Nigeria’s first win after 20 years.
Coach Rena Wakama (32 years) after one year in charge of D’Tigress is the first female coach to ever win an Afrobasket title. She achieved this by winning Nigeria’s 4th consecutive and 6th all-time Afrobasket title.
Monday’s victory over Australia made her the first coach to lead Nigeria to a victory against a Top 3 ranked team at the Olympics.
Wakama was born on April 11, 1992, in Raleigh, North Carolina, US. She is from a family of five, her parents — Johnson Wakama and Rosana Oba are from Okrika, Rivers State and she has two sisters, Yvonne and Mina.
She attended Wake Forest high school in North Carolina. Her love for basketball started at a tender age and was inspired by Onimisi Aiyede, her cousin, who was her partner in crime.
“We did it. Staying up all night playing video games, racing down the street head first on a skateboard, teaching me how to ride a bike, holding my hand on our walk to the bus stop on my first day of kindergarten, teaching me how to drive, installing my stereo system in my first car, kicking my behind in basketball,” she narrated on her Instagram page after Aiyede passed away in 2020.
For her tertiary education, she attended the University of Western Carolina (WSU) where she spent four years playing for ‘Catamounts’ — the institution’s female basketball team.
Wakama received a bachelor’s degree in therapeutic recreation from WSU in 2014.
She had a brief playing career which saw her join the D’Tigress fold in 2015, immediately after she left college. She accompanied D’Tigress to the 2015 Women’s Afrobasket tournament in Cameroon where Nigeria finished third.
Wakama said her name was missing from Nigeria’s team roster at that competition because of a missed deadline for registration.
Speaking on picking up coaching at a young age, Wakama said she is fulfilling a long held dream.
She said: “I knew I wanted to be a coach. I knew that was my calling; that was what I wanted to be.
“I knew that was my journey; I knew I had more impact organising a team. Even while we were in Cameroon with the girls, I just knew exactly what I wanted to do with my career; that’s my calling, that’s my passion, and I had to follow it. When God puts something in your heart, you have to follow it. I wanted to start early.”
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