I wanted to briefly share with everyone the story of my cousin Natalie Nakase.
At age 30 she is the closest in age to my brother and I out of all our cousins and has always been someone we could look up to and aspire to be like. As we each garnered our own success and accolades through our athletic careers, many were astonished to hear that the person in our family with the most basketball awards and accomplishments was our 5'2" female cousin.
After a standout career playing high school basketball in Orange County, Natalie was faced with little interest from major schools, primarily due to her size. She surprised everyone by being accepted to fill the last walk-on position for the women's UCLA basketball team. At UCLA she became the starting point guard and after a stellar 5 year career eventually made her way on to professional women's basketball teams in both San Jose and San Diego.
Recently, Natalie's focus has been on coaching. After stints in Los Angeles and Germany coaching college and professional level women teams, she eventually found her way to Japan's men's professional league. Her most recent position came after the team she was assistant coaching on in Japan went bankrupt. After the team folded, she was offered the head coaching position for another team in the league. She is currently the first female head coach of any professional basketball team in Japan. One day she hopes to coach in the NBA.
Her story has always been of great inspiration to me and proves that while our society has often discouraged or prevented women from being involved with sports. there are those individuals who defy the norms and tirelessly strive to achieve that which many said was unattainable.
Here is the article about her on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/sports/2012/04/27/lah-japan-1st-womens-basketball-coach.cnn#/video/sports/2012/04/27/lah-japan-1st-womens-basketball-coach.cnn
-Ken Nakase KIN 577
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