NGR - Passion drives Adeniyi to new lane

LAGOS (National Team) - A trip to the lane is an integral play for a basketball player. Although Taye Adeniyi has made the trip on countless occasions playing for the First Bank BC, Nigeria's perennial female champions, and the female national team - the Lady Tigers - she is more comfortable firing those huge bombs from the perimeter (it is downtown, when Americans are drawling).

Over the past 15 years, Adeniyi's high-profile shooting has usually been one of the major talking points whenever First Bank rolls out their massive armoury against the vulnerable teams on the national - and even - the international stage.

Built for the small guard role, Adeniyi has made her mark for club and country in the position with distinction over the years, and has been driven by one word: passion.

"I love basketball so much," says Adeniyi during our latest encounter early this month. "I'm passionate when I'm playing the game. It gives me so much joy."

In one poignant moment to demonstrate her undying fervour for the sport, Adeniyi, who has just finished a certificate coaching course at the National Institute for Sports in Lagos, once broke down and wept like a baby as First Bank's challenge to represent Africa in the 2005 FIBA World League collapsed in Dakar (Senegal), the Nigerians losing by more than 10 points to home team, DUC.

The other players were dry-eyed, which aroused a question. "We did not play to our true strength," she managed to offer. "If we had played like a team, we could have won."

Adeniyi made her debut for the national team in 1995 when the national selectors noticed her shooting skills and picked for the 1995 All Africa Games in Zimbabwe.

It has been a long journey with the Lady Tigers strewn along the way with some honours, but she will forever rue her failure to make it to the biggest stage with her colleagues. Adeniyi, who has just called it a day with international duties, was in line to win the gold with the Lady Tigers when Nigeria hosted the eighth All Africa Games in 2003 in Abuja.

A knee injury in a training camp in Latin America jeopardised that dream, and later ruled her out when her colleagues lifted the African Women Championship trophy three months later in Maputo in the December of that year.

Furthermore, she then missed Nigeria's debut in the following year's Olympic Games in Athens.

The injuries cleared, and until another First Bank assignment in Bamako last year, where another one ensured that she would not be part of the Lady Tigers team that retained the African title in Abuja last December.

To compound her woes, her last attempt to play for the Lady Tigers was left in tatters when the Australian Embassy in South Africa refused her visa application for the Melbourne2006 Commonwealth Games.

Left to sort herself out, no official of the Nigeria Basketball Federation has offered any word since the fiasco last March.
"We need better means of communication between players and officials," says Adeniyi, whose newest focus is to bring up kids interested in playing basketball.

"For our players to give their best, they need to be encouraged by the officials. This will ensure the future of the sport in the country."
Even in infancy as a coach, she is already talking like a motivational speaker. "Basketball is all about attitude," she says, "the right attitude, hard work and discipline."

"This is what I want to impart to the youths."

Who wouldn't need this alluring combination?

Obafemi Obadare
Punch Newspapers, Lagos, Nigeria