The first time Nicole Leung Wai-laam felt drawn to basketball was when a teacher showed her class a video of the school team. The now 16-year-old remembered being inspired by the “confidence they played with”.
She started learning the sport at the age of nine and has now become captain of her school team at United Christian College.
Her basketball career has even led her to competitions abroad: last year, she took part in the U17 FIBA 3x3 Asia Cup tournament in Kuala Lumpur. In April, her team won the Zurich Insurance Hong Kong Inter-school 3x3 basketball competition.
But the budding basketball player has an even bigger goal in mind.
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She wants to play professionally in the US Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). But it is not easy to join one of the world’s most prestigious professional basketball leagues – especially if Nicole is on the other side of the globe in Hong Kong.
She found that joining an American school was the best way to get her foot in the door.
When the teen was scouted by The Woodward School in the US and was offered a place on the school basketball team, she saw an opportunity to achieve her goal.
“The change will be hard,” she said, “but I’m looking forward to it.”
With big hopes, the youngster left for the US in June to prepare for this new chapter.
But the transition will force Nicole to change how she plays. “I met students from different schools in the US [and] ... they said I couldn’t play with them as I was too soft,” she said.
“It’s all in the culture,” she explained. “They play with a lot of confidence. I hope one day to learn that confidence.”
According to the teen, the Hong Kong style of basketball is quite different from the US. She noted that the former focused on team play and distributing the ball as evenly as possible, but in the US, the tendency was for most plays to go through a star player.
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But it’s not just her style of play that will need to adjust to a new environment.
“In Hong Kong, [I am] one of the taller players, [but] in the US, they are quite tall, so I will have to adapt,” she explained.
At five-foot-nine, Nicole’s current position is as a centre, which requires height, jumping abilities and defensive skills. But in the US, she hopes to transition into playing on the wing as a guard, a position typically for shorter players who are the offensive go-to for the team.
Nicole will also have to balance the student-athlete lifestyle. As a self-proclaimed “bad student”, she has spent a lot of time studying to meet her school’s requirements.
“It’s been tough,” she conceded, as most of her time is spent revising, practising and playing basketball games. “Because of my busy schedule, I cannot hang out with my family as much as [I] want”.
Despite the gruelling hours, the teen is grateful for her teammates, whom she considers her closest friends, and her coach, William Lo, who inspired her to pursue a career in professional basketball.
“He really pushed me,” said Nicole, who is part the basketball team at Strive Fitness, where Lo is the managing director.
His conditioning and strengthening routines, mixed with drills and challenging matches, allowed the youngster to blossom into the player she is today.
In fact, it was how she played on Lo’s team that attracted interest from the US.
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According to Lo, Nicole will have more personalised coaching at The Woodward School: “It’s a small school where she could get a lot of attention on and off the court.”
Few women basketball players from Hong Kong have made it to the professional track, and Nicole hopes more girls like her can have opportunities to advance in the sport.
“There should be more programmes and resources,” the teen athlete stressed. “Female players deserve the same respect [as male players] ... We should have the same resources as the men.”
