A group of Ugandan basketball coaches visited head coach Paul Nixon and the Columbia women’s basketball team this past week as part of a nationwide tour of American basketball programs and landmarks. Although the landlocked East African country is not known as a world basketball hot spot, it has experienced a recent growth of interest in the sport in part due to the efforts of the U.S. State Department.
The tour’s leader is professor Jens Omli, who has worked with the State Department to help develop basketball in Uganda.
“We chose to pursue a project with basketball in Uganda as a way to use a historically American game to build a friendship with the people in Uganda and reach out to children there,” Omli said.
The tour is funded by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as part of its Sports United division, which attempts to use sports to reach out to children in countries around the world.
According to Omli, the goal of the tour is to educate Ugandan coaches about effective models of development that they can use to improve their teams.
“Basketball is a really new game in Uganda and it’s an exciting time to help develop the fundamentals of the game through coach training, and also use basketball as a way to help the coaches gain international standard, in technical and tactical training,” Omli said.
The four visiting Ugandan coaches, Timothy, Nicholas, Carol, and Cho-Cho, have all had experience playing and now coaching in Uganda. They spent their time observing Lions practices, video and fitness sessions, and the coaches’ preparation for the game against Cornell.
“It was awesome,” Timothy said. “We saw them right from training, strength, and conditioning to their normal practice and how they played in their game, to how they scouted the other team, the videos and film they were watching against the opponent.”
The structure of the Columbia program also interested the Ugandan coaches, with players not just improving their skills through practicing basketball, but also by watching film and lifting weights.
“I liked the structures of the coach, the way he organizes his team ... from the way they trained their [players’] agility, and conducted their practice sessions, to how they do their scouting,” Nicholas said.
The Ugandan coaches also attended the game against Cornell on Saturday, which ended in a loss for the Lions. Nevertheless, the coaches were impressed by Nixon’s coaching decisions in the game, and his attitude after it.
“The way he conducted the game was also impressing, his subs—this one is not doing well, this one needs a breath,” Carol said. “He told us [during a training session] that often when players hold their jerseys or bend down, or they’re not shooting and playing defense, that’s when they’re tired.”
“[I] liked the way Coach Nixon handles his players, the way he has just handled the loss,” Carol added. “Some coaches take it so personal but to him it’s part of the game, there’s a loser and a winner.”
The Ugandan coaches are continuing their tour by heading to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. before visiting UCLA’s and Texas Tech’s basketball programs.
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