The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) has appointed former national team player Rena Wakama as new head coach for D’Tigress.
NBBF confirmed her appointment in a statement on their website on Friday.
“The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) has Engaged Coach Rena Wakama as Head Coach for the Team Nigeria Women’s basketball team, for two years.
“Coach Rena Wakama was a former Nigerian National team player, and currently an Assistant Coach at Stony Brooks University, as Head Coach.
“Wakama was a 4 year letterman at the University of Western Carolina and played professional basketball in the United Kingdom, in addition to playing for the Senior Nigerian National Team.
“She received a bachelor’s degree in therapeutic recreation from Western Carolina in 2014 and an MBA from Manhattan in 2019.
“She is an indigene of the Rivers state of Nigeria.“
6 Comments
May the Almighty re-visit the pains Sunday Dare inflicted on our basketball, especially our female national basketball team on him and his children.
I still can’t phantom how 1 man can put his ego ahead of the many years of hard work and dreams of everyone who had worked hard to put the Name of Nigeria in the top 15 in the world basketball before he set it all ablaze on the alter of self-servitude and nepotism.
Rena’s first task involves rebuilding an emotionally fragile team marred by ill-treatments of all kinds, non-payment of emoluments, a widely publicized strike on youtube by the Tigress players and withdrawal from the World Cup and Olympics which the girls sweated to qualify for in the midst of all these.
I hope she will be skilled and tactful enough to guide them as 3-time back-to-back-to-back FIBA Afrobasket Champions and current defending champion to the competition that will commence in a few weeks from now.
Talk about our usual fire brigade approach to everything. We have a trophy to defend this July and we are just announcing a coach on the 30th of June, to lead a team that last played together almost 2 years ago to defend their continental title.
Honestly, I don’t know what breed of humans are at the helm of affairs of our sports in Nigeria.
Well, at least, Rena Wakama is in her fourth year as an assistant coach at Manhattan College after serving two years as director of women’s basketball operations and also as an assistant coach for the Carolina Flames.
She is not just flaunting her number of international caps like some people.
They prevented the girls from going to the Fiba Women’s world cup and did nothing to those who were involved in the power tussle. Something tells me that the real reason they did that, was because the girls cried out over the money they were trying to keep for themselves, the player’s allowances and donations.
You know Nigerians in those positions are very vindictive.
Look at what they did to Tochukwu, telling the coach to leave her out of his world cup plans, simply because she talked about their unpaid allowances by NFF. And they were trying to impose an unknown keeper on the man, but he refused. They made her write an apology letter.
I won’t be surprised if it all happened as you stated.
These administrators don’t mind firing or banning the whole team or withdrawing them from a world cup if the whole team should complain about unpaid allowances.
They are that bloodthirsty.
A big challenge for Ms. Wakama. Doing her job and massaging the egos of her employers at the same time.
She will need all the skill and tact she can muster!
You are so right. Dare did a lot of harm to Nigerian basketball. This is a massive task for Ms. Wakama to rebuild the team. Managing the politics of the day won’t be easy..
Now they systematically disbanded the team by calling for an open tryouts for players in America and Nigeria when they have less than 4 weeks to a major competition.
They know the core D’tigress team may not go for the open tryouts as they called it.What happened to the mainstream D’tigress team?
They engaged an innocent coach now to clean their mess which is unfortunate.Treating these girls that brought glory and fame to their country in this abysmal manner is depressing.