Opals Olympic silver medallist Rohanee Cox wants to give back.
The former WNBL champion, a league MVP who played over 300 games, has a passion to coach and lead the next generation of basketballers.
“I’m very excited, in the next year I want to get involved over here in WA. Get back into basketball, do a little bit of everything,” she told She Hoops.
“If I do something like oversee a program, I still want to be involved at the basketball level, coaching and assisting.
“I coached when I was playing and I love coaching, especially the little ones because they listen.”
Born in Broome before moving to Willetton at age 14, then to Canberra on an AIS scholarship, Cox created history in 2008 at Beijing with the Opals becoming the first Indigenous Australian to win an Olympic basketball medal.
“Danny Morseu (dual Olympian) is one of my idols, he coached me when I was young coming through and I remember him saying ‘Roey, I’m so jealous of you.
And I asked him ‘what for Uncle?’ and he said you have a silver medal from the Olympics.
“I’m like ‘yeah, I do!’”
Cox first played for the Opals in 1998 but it would be another eight years between representing her country at international level as she welcomed two children and overcame a knee injury.
Not only was she a role model but the talented forward was a poster girl for resilience and hard work.
“Making the team was so exciting, I had my head screwed on and I’d been working really hard,” Cox recalls.
“2006 to about 2009 were the best years for me.
“Winning the WNBL MVP was a pretty big highlight too. I look back now and think maybe I could have made another Olympics but I think I wanted to make one, achieve that, and I did.”
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