Okot’s journey began far from the spotlight as the fifth of eight children in her hometown of Mumias in western Kenya.<\/p>\n
She initially excelled in volleyball at Bishop Sulumeti High School in Kakamega County before being persuaded to move across the country in 2020 to join Kaya Tiwi Secondary, a school on the east coast near Mombasa which has produced some of Kenyan basketball’s biggest names.<\/p>\n
“I was almost scared to try basketball,” she recalled.<\/p>\n
“But when I started playing I fell in love with the game so quickly.”<\/p>\n
Her raw talent propelled her through Kenya’s national youth teams, with college sides in the United States alerted to her potential after she featured in the 3×3 basketball tournament at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.<\/p>\n
However, getting into the USA tested her resilience, as Okot faced no fewer than four visa rejections in her bids to join Troy University in Alabama and then Eastern Michigan University.<\/p>\n
“It was tough. I felt like giving up several times,” Okot revealed.<\/p>\n
“The second, third and fourth one I cried so hard.<\/p>\n
“I had a security guard taking me to my [taxi]. I felt so bad.”<\/p>\n
Having questioned whether to continue a process she described as “so heart-breaking, so discouraging”, Okot believes her parents’ prayers and her own resolve ultimately carried her through.<\/p>\n
Relief finally came on a day in August 2024 that was already marked for celebration.<\/p>\n
“The day that I got my visa was my birthday,” she said with a broad smile across her face.<\/p>\n
“That was my best birthday gift I’ve ever got.<\/p>\n
“I’m so grateful to my mum and my dad and everybody else that kept convincing me to keep trying.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Okot’s journey began far from the spotlight as the fifth of eight children in her hometown of Mumias…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-624162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624162","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=624162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}