When she was growing up in Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, Liz Mills dreamed of one day becoming a professional basketball coach.
Little did she know that she would end up having fame thrust upon her thousands of kilometers away in Africa, where she has made history as the first woman to coach a men’s basketball team in a continental tournament.
After a decade in Africa, Mills is now head coach of the Kenya men’s national basketball team, known as the Kenyan Morans, and in just a short time has steered them to their first AfroBasket championship in 28 years.
Photo: AFP
From Australia, Mills started out on her African adventure in 2011 in Zambia, where she coached the Heroes during the 2011-2012 season and they ended up winning the national championship.
“I was a bit of rarity... I felt discriminated in terms of opportunities,” she said, adding that she was often overlooked because of her age and gender.
Mills said she is now proud to be a “pioneer” as a female coach.
“I hope that I’ve been able to inspire especially female coaches in Africa to start working with men’s teams, as well as women’s teams across the continent,” she said.
However, she said that in 2021 she should not be the first woman to be coaching a national men’s basketball team.
“I am planning on holding the door open and encouraging as many women through the door ... so hopefully in the next couple of years it will be the 100th or 500th to do what I’ve done this year,” she said.
Having served as deputy coach of the Zambia and Cameroon men’s basketball teams, Mills joined the Kenyan Morans in January.
After last appearing at AfroBasket in 1993, the team are making their return to the top-tier continental championships, which started yesterday in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and run through Sunday next week.
“Back in 2012, I said in Zambia that I wanted to be the first woman to coach at the AfroBasket,” Mills said. “Qualifying the Kenyan Morans is a dream which has come true. There have been a lot of ups and downs to get here, but I am very happy to have been able to achieve this.”
On the court, she wears knee-high black leather boots and black jeans along with a red team polo shirt, saying the heels give her “more inches” alongside the towering players.
Mills saw the Morans edge out 11-times African champions Angola 74-73 in Cameroon in February to break their almost three-decade absence from the continent’s basketball showpiece.
Asked about the secret of her own success as a coach, Mills put it down to her philosophy of building good relationships with the players.
“Players don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care about them, and not just a player, but as a person on the court,” she said.
Mills hopes to build on that philosophy as she looks to lead Kenya to greater heights.
“The AfroBasket is a first step in a long journey toward the [FIBA Basketball] World Cup,” she said. “We hope to finish among the top African teams and qualify for the 2025 World Cup.”
Mills said preparations for the tournament have been deliberately low-key.
“We’re not going to put any limit on what our goal is,” she said. “We tried to stay under the radar, and we’re going to surprise a lot of teams when we get to AfroBasket.”
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