Mills said one of the members was once offered a job as the head coach of a men’s team, but the sponsors of the club said that, if she was given the job, they would pull their sponsorship.Įven in the women’s game, coaching is still seen as a job primarily for men. Members of the network have experienced discrimination of all kinds, particularly those working in the men’s game. The network – which Mills set up with her twin, Vic – connects women from all over the world who coach in basketball at all levels of the game, providing them with training and courses to improve their coaching.īut more importantly, it is a safe space for coaches to support each other in an industry that is rife with sexism. “Especially after Kenya qualified, I had a lot of women around the world, from Ireland to the Philippines to Colombia.” “There are so many coaches in Africa now who reach out to me, especially young women, who are like, ‘I saw you coaching Kenya’ or ‘I saw you coaching Salé and that’s why I want to coach,’” says Mills. That’s why she founded the Global Women in Basketball Coaching Network in August. In being the first to accomplish what she has, Mills has blazed this trail on her own, but she doesn’t want any other woman to have to do the same. “My male colleagues aren’t sitting there worrying about stuff like that at all. And so I’m saying: ‘Gosh, I hope we win this game, but I hope we play well.’ But then I’ve got to, as a woman, perform as well. “Our first game against Cote d’Ivoire was the first time a woman had coached at an event like that ever. “I think back to AfroBasket,” remembers Mills.
#Zambian observer full
She has also become accustomed to having the spotlight on her in the full knowledge that any failure will not simply be seen as a personal failure, but also one of her entire gender.
“An Australian journalist asked me what I did when the players take showers,” said Mills, “or what I do in the locker room when they need to get changed.” “I remember the first time we played against Angola, they were like, ‘What is your water girl doing on the court?’ They couldn’t comprehend there was a female coach.”īut the prejudice was not restricted to Angolans. Mills laughs looking back at her trials and accomplishments but enduring the discrimination she has suffered has not been easy. With that success under her belt, Mills made the move from East to North Africa, taking over Moroccan club AS Salé and breaking another milestone as she became the first woman to coach a men’s basketball team in the Arab world. In the competition itself, Mills guided Kenya out of the group stages for the first time in its history and only narrowly missed out on the quarterfinals, losing 60-58 to South Sudan in the round of 16. In February 2021, forward Tylor Ongwae hit a buzzer-beater to lift Kenya over Angola – the most successful team in AfroBasket history – booking the Morans’ spot at the tournament. She duly delivered in the most dramatic fashion. Mills took over the Kenya job ahead of the AfroBasket 2021 qualifiers, where the country was looking to make it to Africa’s premier competition for the first time in 28 years.
Over the next 10 years, Mills coached club teams in Zambia and Rwanda and served as an assistant coach to the Zambian and Cameroonian national teams before getting her big break as the head coach of the Kenyan men’s national team. That one hour turned into one training session, which turned into another training session, which turned into Mills taking charge of Heroes Play United. He worked for the World Bank, Maziko Phiri, and was very open minded, so we have a chat and he said, ‘OK, you can have an hour of practice.’” “And he introduced me to the club president.
“I go up to one of the players and ask, ‘Do you have a club president or anything here?’” she recalls. Like many of us when watching a sports team, Mills thought that she could do better but unlike most of us, she did something about it. Having spent several years coaching basketball in Australia, mainly with boys and girls, Mills was volunteering in Zambia when she was invited by a friend to watch a local men’s club team. She is a pioneer and a champion for women in a sport where coaches are almost exclusively male. Mills was inspired by trailblazers in the women’s game, but she would become a trailblazer in an entirely different way. “I saw these strong, successful, intelligent women winning the league. She adds, “I think that put the idea in my head that, I’m not going to be a great player, but I could be a great coach. Mills says, “I always say that, for me, seeing coaches like Kari Grass, Karen Dilts and Jared Sterling, these were head coaches of women’s teams in the 90s and early 2000s.” Unlike most, the people who inspired her were not the players, but rather the coaches on the sidelines.
Growing up in Australia, Mills watched the Women’s National Basketball League.
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