New Zealand woman to win the NCAA basketball title.<\/a><\/p>\nLeger-Walker attended St Peter’s School in Cambridge before starting her collegiate career in the United States.<\/p>\n
She played for Washington State between 2020 and 2024, before transferring to the UCLA Bruins.<\/p>\n
A serious knee injury meant she didn’t play her first season for UCLA but she had a dream final NCAA this year with the Bruins, playing 38 games, averaging 28 minutes, 8.4 points and 5.6 assists.<\/p>\n
In the NCAA final against South Carolina, Leger-Walker scored 10 points.<\/p>\n
Her mother, Leanne Walker, is a former Tall Fern, and her sister Krystal has also represented New Zealand.<\/p>\n
The only other New Zealand woman to compete in the WNBA was Megan Compain who played for Utah Starzz in 1997.<\/p>\n
Compain was signed by the Starzz and didn’t got through the draft.<\/p>\n
University of Connecticut guard Azzi Fudd was taken by the Dallas Wings as the number one pick in the WNBA draft.<\/p>\n
Leger-Walker’s UCLA team-mate Lauren Betts was selected by the Washington Mystics with the fourth pick.<\/p>\n
Leger-Walker becomes the first New Zealand woman to be drafted into the WNBA.<\/p>\n
Speaking after her selection, Leger-Walker hoped it would inspire others back home.<\/p>\n
“I’m just really humbled that I can be that role model and hope that everybody watching from New Zealand knows that they belong here and if they set their sights high they can be limitless.”<\/p>\n
She said she was looking forward to joining up with her new team-mates.<\/p>\n
“Going in with an open mind, taking in a lot from the vets, learning a lot and just being the best team-mate I can be in whatever role that is.”<\/p>\n
The 2026 WNBA season starts in early May with the Sun playing the New York Liberty.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlisse Leger-Walker of the UCLA Bruins makes a pass during the second half of their game against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":["post-378292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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