{"id":183765,"date":"2025-10-02T00:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T00:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/183765\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T00:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T00:14:11","slug":"aussie-ex-miss-world-makes-sporting-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/183765\/","title":{"rendered":"Aussie ex-Miss World makes sporting history"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old, newly in charge of the Fortaleza squad in northeastern Brazil, is prepping hard for the country\u2019s elite men\u2019s basketball championship which starts in October.<\/p>\n

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It is no easy task: the club was dead last in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be just the first woman. I want to be someone who left a mark,\u201d Todorovic told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be someone who made this team better, who made my players better, and I want my results to speak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todorovic \u2014 who arrived in Brazil in August \u2014 played for Red Star Belgrade, a leading club back home, before becoming a coach at age 20.<\/p>\n

In 2016 she was a Miss World South Australia state finalist, and later worked on the club level in Australia before joining the coaching staff of men\u2019s national teams in Serbia, Spain and Greece.<\/p>\n

It was with Greece that 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.<\/p>\n

It is the NBA which most inspires Todorovic, notably former player Becky Hammon, the first woman assistant coach in the league.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecky Hammon was one of the first, biggest, inspirations for me because as a little girl, I didn\u2019t have many people to look up to, someone that looked like me,\u201d said Todorovic.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, having her there as a trailblazer… was super inspiring, and it gave me the extra motivation to follow my dreams.\u201d In the country where football is king, she wants to ignite a passion for basketball, which she describes as a \u201creligion\u201d in Serbia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said her dream is to create such a new basketball fervour in Fortaleza.<\/p>\n

And if, along the way, \u201cI\u2019ve inspired one girl to take my path, my job is done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brazil has one of the strongest basketball traditions in South America, and the top men\u2019s league, the Novo Basquete Brasil (NBB) increasingly attracts foreign players and coaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serbian-Australian basketball coach Jelena Todorovic wants to be more than just the first woman coaching a male team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[2620,64,63,726,117609,117613,102656,117615,117611,97533,11308,117606,3898,117610,117608,7232,80489,37342,10549,62367,117614,2020,85,117612,117607],"class_list":{"0":"post-183765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-agence-france-presse","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-basketball-atmosphere","13":"tag-basketball-championship","14":"tag-basketball-coach","15":"tag-basketball-fervor","16":"tag-basketball-traditions","17":"tag-becky-hammon","18":"tag-brazil","19":"tag-coach-breaks-barriers","20":"tag-greece","21":"tag-gregg-popovich","22":"tag-jelena-todorovic","23":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","24":"tag-red-star-belgrade","25":"tag-regular-season-game","26":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","27":"tag-serbia","28":"tag-single-regular-season","29":"tag-spain","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-woman-assistant","32":"tag-woman-coach-breaks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}