Nigeria’s national women’s basketball team, D’Tigress, made history by becoming only the second team to win the Afrobasket championship four consecutive times, securing their latest victory with an 84-74 win over Senegal on Saturday. In addition, D’Tigress’ head coach, Rena Wakama, broke new ground as the first female coach to win the championship since its inception in 1966. After 57 years of male dominance in African women’s basketball, Wakama represents a fresh and exciting change.

Despite being appointed less than a month before the Rwandan tournament, Wakama led the team to an unbeaten record in African championships, having already secured victories in the first three tournaments.

Here are five things to know about the remarkable Rena Wakama:

• Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 11, 1992, Wakama’s parents, Johnson Wakama and Rosana Oba, hail from Okrika in Rivers State, Nigeria.

• She graduated in 2014 from Western Carolina University with a Bachelor’s degree in Therapeutic Recreation and played four years for the university’s women’s basketball team, the “Catamounts.”

• After a brief playing career, Wakama joined D’Tigress in 2015, shortly after graduating. She traveled to Cameroon with the team for the 2015 Women’s Afrobasket competition, where Nigeria finished third. Due to a missed registration deadline, her name did not appear on the official roster for that event.

• Before her coaching career, she competed with Nigeria’s First Bank at the FIBA Africa Champions Cup for Women.

Wakama moved to Manhattan College, initially serving as the operations director for women’s basketball for her first two years. In her third year, she was promoted to assistant coach, where she developed her coaching skills while also managing the team’s academic and volunteer activities.