Assessing the U16 Girls Performance at the Qualifiers

Despite not winning any game at the U16 Afrobasket Qualifiers, the Junior Gazelles competed hard and got a lot of valuable experience.

June 23, 2025

3–5 minutes

Junior Gazelles

After the game against Tanzania, most of the U16 girls cried.

For a moment, I thought that maybe the coaches had said some stuff to them but on asking, that wasn’t the case.

The girls were crying because they had lost the game and that’s when it hit me that I was watching very young girls.

With that in mind, the assessment of this group is very lenient and it is not the same, say for a U23, U18 or even senior teams, with the same results.

Uganda lost all the 3 games but before we get into that, what were the expectations?

Given the performance of the U18 in 2024, many fans expected the team to go and shine.

However, from an insider point of view, the expectation was for the team to play well and hopefully get some wins.

Why was that the case?

This dates back to the first day of trials where only 45 girls showed up.

In contrast, the boys were 145 and more came on day 2 while the girls numbers were consistently low.

This limited the pool from which the coaches could select from as they had to chose from those that turned up.

Uganda doesn’t have a continually running program and they always do tryouts and also run to schools and academies.

This time around, there was scarcity of U16 girls and that made the work of the coaches difficult.

To make matters worse, after the X-ray and some MRI scans, the numbers were reduced to less than 8 players.

At this point, the coaches had to figure things out and put together a squad and so with all this, the expectations to win a lot was not there.

Reality at the tournament

In the first game against Kenya, Uganda led 12-10 after the first quarter but the Kenyans discovered our weakness, pressure.

From the second quarter onwards, Kenya was applying a lot of pressure on the guards and they could barely do anything.

Kenya outscored Uganda 45-18 in the second and third quarters and they secured a 63-40 victory.

The reality of this game was the experience gap between Kenya and Uganda.

With the way Kenya approached the game, you could tell that some of the their players had been in such situations before which wasn’t the case for Uganda.

When it came to the game against Tanzania, the girls came close, lost 65-55 but they were in the game till the end.

In the fourth quarter, the Junior Gazelles trailed by 8 but they couldn’t stop Tanzania’s Rose Katamboy.

Everything that Rose touched turned to gold, even when you thought the girls had played good defense, she found a way.

She scored 14 points and 5 of her 6 field goal attempts in the fourth quarter.

The game against Rwanda hurt more that the first 2.

With 4:29 left in the game, Uganda trailed by 1 point but for some reason they couldn’t score anymore and everything Rwanda touched turned to gold.

They made 5 of 8 field goals plus 4 free throws in the final 4 minutes to win the game 64-51.

Are these okay results?

As fans, you always want your team to win and every time they don’t, you get very disappointed.

However, for the girls, this was a fair performance.

A couple of changes in preparation and could have gotten a win or even 2.

This tournament has helped give the girls some valuable experience and to expose them to the international scene.

Players like Charis Namirembe, Jovia Anena, Shivan Mwesigwa and Marion Apio all showed sparks of brilliance but that wasn’t enough.

This was a reality to them that there are guys out there who are better and in case you want to get better, you have to work harder.

Honestly, that was the most important thing for the girls, other than the results.

Lessons learnt

For the girls, they just need to go and work more on their craft. Undoubtedly, we shall be some of them representing at the U18 next year but they will need to have improved tremendously.

For the parents, seeing your children playing at the tournament was huge and exciting but in order for them reach their potential, they have to do more.

The parents have to be more supportive and try to put the children in programs that can help them become better players.

FUBA faced a problem of scarcity of players and this points to many things.

The youth league was played last year but one could ask, which players did we get from there.

This is a reminder that FUBA has to do more pushing on the school’s leagues and in that way, players can easily be tracked.

All in all, the girls enjoyed the trip and did very well cheering on the boys.

Hopefully Uganda can be given a wildcard and they compete at the Championship in Rwanda.