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First woman coach breaks barriers in Brazil basketball / Photo: © AFP
First woman coach breaks barriers in Brazil basketball
Serbian-Australian basketball coach Jelena Todorovic wants to be more than just the first woman coaching a male team in Brazil, as she works on reversing the fortunes of players who finished bottom of the table last season.
The 31-year-old, newly in charge of the Fortaleza squad in northeastern Brazil, is prepping hard for the country's elite men's basketball championship which starts in October.
It is no easy task: the club was dead last in 2024.
"I don't want to be just the first woman. I want to be someone who left a mark," Todorovic told AFP.
"I want to be someone who made this team better, who made my players better, and I want my results to speak for themselves."
Todorovic -- who arrived in Brazil in August -- played for Red Star Belgrade, a leading club back home, before becoming a coach at age 20.
She worked on the club level in Australia before joining the coaching staff of men's national teams in Serbia, Spain and Greece -- where she coached star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has since become a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award in the US National Basketball Association.
It is the NBA which most inspires Todorovic, notably former player Becky Hammon, the first woman assistant coach in the league.
In December 2020, Hammon became the first and only female head coach in the NBA for a single regular season game, when San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich was sent off during a game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
"Becky Hammon was one of the first, biggest, inspirations for me because as a little girl, I didn't have many people to look up to, someone that looked like me," said Todorovic.
"So, having her there as a trailblazer... was super inspiring, and it gave me the extra motivation to follow my dreams."
In the country where football is king, she wants to ignite a passion for basketball, which she describes as a "religion" in Serbia.
"I didn't doubt for a second coming to Brazil. I accepted it straight away because I really enjoy the new challenges, like coming to a new culture, a new basketball atmosphere."
She said her dream is to create such a new basketball fervor in Fortaleza.
And if, along the way, "I've inspired one girl to take my path, my job is done."
Brazil has one of the strongest basketball traditions in South America, and the top men's league, the Novo Basquete Brasil (NBB) increasingly attracts foreign players and coaches.
P. da Silva--JDB
