{"id":17002,"date":"2020-09-11T17:21:10","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T07:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basketball.draftcentral.com.au\/?p=17002"},"modified":"2020-09-11T17:21:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T07:21:10","slug":"wnbl-player-spotlight-townsville-fire-zitina-aokuso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wnbl-player-spotlight-townsville-fire-zitina-aokuso\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBL Player Spotlight: Townsville Fire – Zitina Aokuso"},"content":{"rendered":"

IN terms of the biggest and most anticipated returns to the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) next season, the re-arrival of 21-year-old Zitina Aokuso<\/strong> is up there across the league, with the 193cm-tall center set to take the league by storm after recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) related injury.<\/p>\n

Townsville Fire head coach Shannon Seebohm<\/em><\/strong> seemed enthusiastic when asked about the avenues that Aokuso could start to open up for his offence, a tactic he has not yet employed fully to this stage. \u201cIt really hurt us last season not having Zitina,\u201d Seebohm said. \u201cShe gives you a little bit more of that athletic punch, and when she\u2019s fit and healthy, she\u2019s great at running the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to benefit greatly from having her back this year and she\u2019s been working extremely hard to rehab her knee and get back fit and healthy on the floor,\u201d the Townsville coach added. \u201cLast year I think we struggled at times defensively not having that bigger and more physical presence around the rim and the post, as well as help-side defence and being able to challenge shots at the rim,\u201d listed Seebohm.<\/p>\n

For Aokuso personally, missing out on last season was one of the hardest things she has ever endured, but learned the true meaning of what a teammate was and how she could motivate her peers without being on the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing on the sideline last season was one of the toughest things I\u2019ve ever had to do,\u201d Aokuso said. \u201cThe main takeaways from an off-court perspective is that I\u2019ll never take the opportunity to the thing I love and being able to be active for granted. Knowing I couldn\u2019t be on the court, I managed to find ways I could still stay involved,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

Simple things like dancing on the sideline, giving advice where she thought it could help or just being a positive energy on the bench were all examples of being a good teammate for the young gun. Additionally, it is Aokuso\u2019s work outside of the stadium that also places her within a well-respected part of the Townsville community, helping create exercise videos for schools and participating in school visits alongside her teammates, which the Fire prides themselves on as a franchise.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our club, it\u2019s basically the reason we exist,\u201d Seebohm said. \u201cThat\u2019s our mission and that\u2019s why we\u2019re here, to be out in our community. We\u2019re a community-based club, so we rely on sponsorship and we rely on people coming to watch games.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think it\u2019s great for Zitina. She\u2019s done such a good job in our community program this offseason, but it\u2019s just a great thing that young females in North-Queensland can see such positive female role models and be able to see what is possible,\u201d he finalised.<\/p>\n

For Zitina\u2019s Young Guns in the WNBL Feature \u2013 Click HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IN terms of the biggest and most anticipated returns to the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) next season, the re-arrival of 21-year-old Zitina Aokuso is up there across the league, with the 193cm-tall center set to take the league by storm after recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) related injury. Townsville Fire head coach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":16912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2740,2871,2814,11],"tags":[1991,1997,1972,201],"class_list":["post-17002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-townsville-fire","category-wnbl","tag-shannon-seebohm","tag-townsville-fire","tag-wnbl","tag-zitina-aokuso"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}